reading

I have been doing a lot of reading lately. Like a good 4 hours per day, no joke. When I'm not reading, I'm writing about reading. Or thinking about what I am supposed to be reading. Or telling Ty what I have been reading about only to huff and puff and read him passages that help him understand what I am getting at.

Get the picture? Most of the time I love to read. Sometimes, however, I feel so burnt out on it that I think my eyeballs will fall out at the turning of another page. (Did you know the word "eyeball" comes from Shakespeare? You pick up information like that along the way.) Anyway. On nights like these, I can think of a million other things I would rather do than read. Like watch The Office. Or write my own dang book. Or clean the bathroom. Seriously.

But then, I read books like Of Mice and Men, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Beloved, The Things they Carried, Passing, Twelfth Night and Much Ado about Nothing and I lie awake at night and think of all the things I learned. All the thoughts I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been faced with the moral issues literature asks us to consider... I ask myself questions like "is it true that we don't read Shakespeare, Shakespeare reads us?" "Why do we read books with unreliable narrators?" And the one question that plagues me most, "What the heck good does sitting around talking about literature do me?"

Then, I always proceed to have this epiphany. It goes:  hey, you know what? I aamm in the right major after all. I love this stuff.

I am so grateful for knowledge. For brilliant souls who so beautifully demonstrate life's complexities through story. If I have learned nothing else at college, (don't get me wrong, I totally have) it is that I love to read. It has changed my life. It has shaped me as a thinker and as a learner.

Feeling pretty thankful for my education right now if ya can't tell.