This is the seventh in a series of posts about Maryanne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home. You can read the introductory post and find links to other posts in the series here.
“To read…we need a certain kind of silence that seems increasingly elusive in our over-networked society…and it is not contemplation we desire but an odd sort of distraction, distraction masquerading as being in the know. In such a landscape, knowledge can’t help but fall prey to illusion, albeit an illusion that is deeply seductive, with it’s promise that speed can lead us to illumination, that it is more important to react that to think deeply…Reading is an act of contemplation…an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction.”
David Ulin
The last letter in Maryanne Wolf’s book, Reader, Come Home, is it’s most philosophical. Here we move from brain research and how-tos to the deep why of reading. The why that goes beyond practical necessity and examines how our reading life relates to our character, experience, and behavior.
Deep reading involves reflection, and so deep reading is a kind of contemplation. When we read deeply we contemplate “all manner of human existence and ponder a universe whose real mysteries dwarf any of our imagination.”
In this section, Wolf returns to the idea of time. The contemplative life offered by reading gives us time for three things we might otherwise miss:
- Time for Joy: Here’s where the phrase Festina Lente (hurry slowly) comes in. We hurry because we enjoy what we’re reading, but we also slow down because we want to savor every word.
- Time for Social Good: You don’t have to be a reader to have a conscience, to care about moral or social issues. But reading gives us a way to evaluate and refine our values by exposing us to alternative viewpoints. Wolf points out that holding a passionate (but uninformed) position can lead to all sorts of trouble:
“…we need to confront the reality that when bombarded with too many options, our default can be to rely on information that places few demands upon thinking…We think we know enough, that misleading mental state that lulls us into a form of passive cognitive complacency that precludes further reflection and opens the side the door for others to think for us.”
–Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home
3. Time for Wisdom: Let’s hand the description of this one over to Wolf herself:
“…Of all the gifts that the [contemplative] life of the good reader bestows, wisdom, the highest form of cognition, is its ultimate expression…to be continuously engaged in trying to reach and express our best thoughts so as to expand an ever truer, more beautiful understanding of the universe and to lead lives based on this vision.”
–Maryanne Wolf, Reader, Come Home
Scroll through any social media outlet and it’s clear that everyone’s got, not only an opinion, but a moral vision. A position is easy to come by, but truly engaging the world in an ethical way is challenging, it takes more than memes, filters and trendy activism. Contemplative reading gives us a way to develop, refine, and enact our values.
“Wisdom, I conclude, is not contemplation alone, not action alone, but contemplation in action.”
–John Dunne
So here we are, at the end of the series. I hope you’re inspired to tend to your own reading life and that of the little ones you care for. I also hope you’ll pick up Maranne Wolf’s Reader, Come Home, it’s got more insight than can be crammed into a few, short posts.
“The good readers of a society are both its canaries–which detect the presence of danger to is members–and its guardians of our common humanity.”
Maryanne wolf, reader, come home
