I read every day. For eight years now, I’ve woken up at around 4am, made a cup of tea and read for an hour. Recently I’ve started walking for an hour from 5am during which I listen to an audiobook. Every week I listen to selected articles from the Economist, and I also listen to a range of podcasts.
I don’t know why, but this seems to disturb a lot of people. I’ve been told a number of times that I read too much, that I shouldn’t quote the books and occasionally that I shouldn’t tell people that I read.
To all of these people I say ‘tough’.
I enjoy reading. I enjoy the education. I enjoy being able to remember what Ir ead and cite it at the right moments in conversation. I enjoy the training I get in areas that are new to me. I satisfies my curiosity, and being informed is a key part of my identity. In fact there are so many benefits to reading, that anyone who’s reading this and identifying with any of the sentences at the beginning of this paragraph, I would say that perhaps I’m not the one with the problem. Perhaps people don’t like being reminded how easy reading has become and yet they still don’t do it.
So what does that say about your identity ?
Quite.