Feel the joy of reading

A while ago, I saw such a news: a father because his son who was in junior high school was tired of school, decisively put down his career, persuaded his family, drove a caravan, accompanied his child to travel to China, and "let the child rethink the meaning and value of life." I was impressed by the scene in the news video where father and son read face to face in their motorhome, it was pitch black outside the window, and father and son quietly turned the pages in the warm yellow light. Imagine if they were carrying a mobile phone in their hands, and each silently swiped his finger on the screen, what would it be like?

This scene reminds me of when I was a child, my brother and I sat on either side of my mother, who gently shook the fan in one hand to drive away mosquitoes and told us stories with a book in the other. The soft voice of the mother, and the high and low cicadas chirping, the summer nights of that time carried many childhood fantasies. Growing up, I started reading books on my own. In the book, I saw the sea, grasslands, and glaciers outside of my hometown where I saw the mountains. The grass and trees, rooms and tiles of my hometown are mixed with every word, picture and painting in the book, which makes my sensory world more sensitive and rich. Fallen leaves, dirt, flowers, rivers, these small things that have soothed me, I am happy to meet them in words, and I am willing to write for them.

Back to the present, I have to admit that the most intimate playmate of children now is probably the mobile phone. Children are keen to discuss the characters in the game, imitate the so-called humor in the short videos, and even the little dolls who are learning to speak have the same way of sliding on the screen with their little fingers. The child facing the mobile phone is so "quiet". So some people joke that as long as you have a mobile phone, you can easily take your children.

Isn't that sad? However, the situation of our adults is probably only worse. It's like my friend comforted me as a single: "It's okay, you still have a phone!" "Yes, I am also deeply affected by the "poison" of mobile phones, every day the book does not turn a few pages, and the time of several hours or even a night passes in dozens or hundreds of videos. But after that? Often it is plunged into boundless emptiness and trepidation.

In fact, reading is also lonely, but it is a happy loneliness. I was immersed in it and felt that life was quiet and beautiful. The reason is simple, the reading of books itself is a positive existence, it will naturally give positive incentives for affirmation. The process of reading is pious and focused, making people away from the noise, as if they have become a cloud and a wind in nature, clean and free. The feeling and harvest brought by reading is also incomparably magical, it can not be described by a certain quantifier, but a silent accumulation of moisturizers, which will make the soul fuller and fuller, and this fullness appears particularly light and comfortable.

Borges once said, "I think reading a book is no less than traveling or falling in love." Unfortunately, travel and love are everyone yearning for, and reading seems to have become more and more "niche". Since when, our acceptance of words has become more and more difficult, even fragmented reading, it seems to be gradually declining - from thick and thin book text, to more than 100 words of Microblog essays, and now in seconds of short videos, the torrent of information has consumed people's patience, weakened people's ability to use words to build pictures, vision and thinking are often confined to the small screen in front of them.

In this era when mobile phones can connect the entire earth, the Internet seems to be transmitting information and emotions, but in fact, people indulge in it and consume will. Some stories, only words can give temperature; some words, even more, only the pages have flavor. I had oscillated between paper books and e-books, and then I thought that as long as the matter of reading books remained unchanged, whether it was a piece of paper in my left hand or a convenience in my right hand, it was no different. The key is whether you have a firm heart.

Now, then, I should quickly break free from another quagmire and set aside some time every day to put away my phone and then open a book, or even click on an e-book page. Like Haruki Murakami, enjoy the summer light, the smell of the wind, the chirping of cicadas, and feel the unique joy of reading that is no less than traveling or falling in love.