Losing my true self through excessive reading

Jeremiah, because you read you are fake.

Someone recently accused me of being inauthentic, lacking spontaneity, and untrue to what it is to be “real.” They attributed this degradation to the number and type of books that I have read over the last year.

“These books are all about you! How can you be spontaneous having read these? You cannot! If you are constantly learning from so many books then you are losing your true self. What a shame.”

At first I was quite dumfounded. No one has ever accused me of anything negative after learning that I love to spend time reading.

After I gathered my thoughts I responded:

“Spontaneity is responding from your core. Whoever and whatever you truly are at the center is what comes out when you live life spontaneously.

In a way, by reading and internalizing concepts that I wish to influence my life, I am shaping my core. I am testing it, molding it, and building it into what I deem admirable; admirable character, empathy, discipline, wisdom, compassion etc.

So, after reading my many books, I would argue that I am still real, spontaneous and my “true self” just as much as a full grown oak tree is still true to the acorn from which it came.”

The acorn and the oak.

No one will accuse an oak tree of being untrue to its original self simply because it has run its course of growth, strengthening, and dignification. No one will point an accusatory finger at the disingenuous way in which the tree has searched out nutrients in the soil, soaked up both sun and water and spread its roots deep while expanding its trunk and raising its leafy head to the heavens.

What an admirable thing the growth of an oak is.

Why then is it any different for a young man to actively seek nutrients, bathe in the sun and drink up the waters as they come in order to establish undaunted roots, a firm foundational trunk and the ability to scrape the heavens with the uppermost boughs?

This is what reading can accomplish.

The absurd power of a book.

Reading is my ability to call a meeting of the greatest minds in the world. I can sit, listen, mix ideas, be challenged in my (small) way of thinking, and learn from countless lives lived before me.

I can call on Benjamin Franklin at noon and Napoleon Hill after dinner.

I can flex my mental muscles with Rousseau or Hume then find something humorous about the (near) aphorisms of Nietzsche.

I can consult with Bill Gates to learn about creative problem-solving in regards to business generation.

I can glean salient mantras from the ruminations of Marcus Aurelius and appreciate the craftsmanship of Andrea Palladio’s replicable symmetry.

I can grasp at understanding true suffering from Viktor Frankl and I can seek to understand the hopeful trajectory of mankind with Matt Ridley.

Reading is not a burden. It is a privilege.

Those who do not read are no better off than those who cannot.

Thinking about it another way, those who do not read are squandering their great privilege and disrespecting those who cannot.

Sit still and live passively or get up and chase it all down.

Your life, who you are, is made up of past experiences, your memories, and therefore the way you interpret the world around you.

Many of us depend on a passive understanding of the world that comes through those experiences and memories that inevitably occur in our lives.

We hold still and just take the world as it comes.

Others, those who have had enough of sitting and understand the ease by which a broader understanding can be had, get up and acquire their own experiences and memories in addition to those that inevitably enter their lives.

Read more and the hole through which you view the world will expand.

Reading is your chance to ideate, troubleshoot, speculate, and learn from the most marvelous men and women to have walked this earth (and some that are still walking!).

Reading conquerors time. There are no barriers that stand between you and Plato or Aristotle when you open the pages of a book.

Don’t underestimate the gift and immense privilege we have in our ability to read.

Try it out someday, you’ll like it I promise.

This article was originally published on Medium.com.