Why You Should Read – 6 Reasons

It might seem strange to ask such an obvious question: “What is the use of reading?” We all know from childhood that it is useful to read books. Nevertheless, we live in a time when this question needs to be raised again and again.

1. Development of the creative component of the personality

The main benefit of reading books is that your mind and imagination are involved in the reading process. You involuntarily become participants in the process of creating an artwork, creating, not consuming. The author of the work has recorded their vision of the world on paper in their own words using their own concepts. The reader has an inner world different from the inner world of the writer, thus they interpret all these concepts in their own way and create their own inner world using their own artistic images. Of course, the author and the writer have similar artistic images, because they grew out of the same work. However, the artwork is refracted through the personality of the reader and becomes a new personal work.

As it was already mentioned, imagination is activated during reading. Why is this imagination needed? Maybe only creatives from the advertising department need it to create a funky advertising poster that, with its artistic value, would catch the attention of taxi drivers and passengers of buses passing by the billboard in which this creation is placed?

Not at all. We need imagination much more often.

2. What are you worth as an interlocutor?

Imagination is needed to bring an element of creativity into our daily life. Rich imagination is necessary in order to be an interesting interlocutor, whose activity is not limited to listing the latest news, the latest jokes from social networks and witticisms from popular humor shows. The fact is that most of your friends are already aware of these replicated jokes. Therefore, they do not represent any value for communication. Everything that becomes a product of mass consumption ceases to be valuable. It is your thoughts that have emerged in the process of communication with this person that is of a particular value. But if you do not have imagination nothing will arise, and you will not be able to bring anything special and personal to this relationship.

Of course, your unique life story will always have value. Funny and sad episodes from your life will always have lasting value because your stories are yourself. You’ve become who you are due to all these stories. But what will you tell when all these stories are over? Let’s leave this question open.

3. Reading and family

Oddly enough but creative qualities directly affect the course of the family life of the spouses. The statistics say: the highest percentage of divorces is in families who have been married for 5-7 years. This is exactly the age of the family when everyone has already got to know each other well, heard all the stories, and does not expect anything new from each other.

A reading person, a person with a good imagination, will always be able to bring creativity and novelty into any relationship. The opposite statement is also true: the interlocutor, whose spiritual world is filled with the information from TV, will be limited in their ability to communicate and develop relationships.

4. Supporting intelligence

If you get used to reading books, your brain will always be “in good shape” and it won’t be difficult for you to solve the problems you face. The habit of thinking is a good habit. No creative process is complete without the use of your intellectual abilities.

But you should not confuse a reading person and an enthusiastic viewer. Both are involved in the process of receiving and processing information, but the latter requires less mental activity. The visual news series is accompanied by ready-made video images so that the finished product will be pushed into your consciousness, and no participation is required from you, except that you open your eyes and ears wider. Therefore, a person who consumes the flow of information through visual media can be called a consumer. And the reading person can be called a thinking and creative one.

5. The volatile value of information

The truth is that the price of a thing is based on how difficult we get it. Earlier, books were more valuable. Now they literally cost nothing. Within a few minutes, you can find any popular book on the Internet and download it to your computer or smartphone. It is this total availability that devalues books. Paradoxically, having total access to information a person uses only the most unworthy samples of this information. Despite being really close to the world’s cultural and intellectual heritage, precious works, and books, we are too lazy to reach out to take them. We do nothing to join the world’s cultural values, the cultural values of your country.

People who do not read are people without roots, who have nothing to do with their country, do not know either its culture or history.

6. Pure food for the mind

In addition, books are generally apolitical, at least when compared to state media. The classics is especially apolitical. So, reading works of classics you can be calm about the purity of your brain. Recognized classics, on the contrary, will correct your brains. After all, it is no secret that traditional media are used for propaganda purposes, they introduce us to the artificial world in order to substitute concepts and apply other methods of NLP programming. Therefore, if you come across a question in the newspaper, this does not mean that the author of the article cares about your intellectual health and stimulation of your mental activity. Perhaps, on the contrary, they want to lead you to a dead-end and impose something on you.

A classic example of such manipulation is when a sales assistant asks a person who is considering a product they like: “Will you pay in cash or with a card?” The person has not yet decided whether they will buy anything at all, but they are already told to buy it. They are backed into a corner in which not a single answer will be correct.

If you read the works of Leo Tolstoy, you’ll face simple questions that will prompt you to seriously think about your attitude to life and people. Questions from his works will affect not only the intellectual but also the spiritual facets of your personality.

It is obvious that in this article, the media were criticized, while reading was praised. This confrontation is not accidental. It was modern media that discouraged people from reading. And it is these enemies that you need to defeat if you want to be a creative, independently-minded person.