Reading is one of the primary methods of obtaining additional input to our thinking minds. We watch events occur around us, maybe on television, movies, or played out in real life. We hear the radio, music from a variety of electronic devices or the sounds of life as it happens from every direction. The birds sing, traffic roars, people shout and talk and even snap their fingers for our attention. We take it all in and mentally process it as we step through time. Each gesture, each word, each marvelous sound (and the annoying ones too) make an impact on who we are as thinking human beings. But reading has special impact. If you cannot read you tend to be at a very distinct disadvantage. If you read, you influence what you perceive by who you are at that point in your life.
I’ve heard it said that perception is nine tenths of the truth you believe. We perceive hot and cold temperatures based on our bodies current condition of health. Eighty degrees may be comfortable today and sweltering tomorrow. What you read is important for informing and instructing. Whom you read after develops your view of what is right and proper and what ought not to be.
However how you read what you read of whom you read is perhaps the most telling part of where it settles in your mind and soul. We strive to fit some reading time in so we can benefit ourselves from the insights and experiences of others. Yet we limit their influence by how we read what is presented. Some appreciate clever limericks. Others enjoy lengthy, slowly unwinding, interwoven personality tales.
I prefer somethings which make me think. I want to be prompted to consider a different view so as to validate or repudiate my preconceived notions.
So as I enter into the unimaginable wisdom and actualities of else’s someone’s mind, I will often ask myself if I think I already have them figured out or if I am open to finding what I think, is foreign to what I am about to partake. Are my unique experiences and understandings going to cause me to outright reject those of the author or will I be able to assuage the tide of prejudice I bring to the reading?
More than anything I know of, I believe people, all people, want to be right. Whether it is the food they eat or the people they love or the books or blogs they read, people want to know in their own thinking that they are right. That is probably why there are so many differing views available to be persuaded by. It is not just the nuances of view but the whole spectrum of left to right, black to white, or good to evil. All of this, all the differences, must come together on the basis of a standard.
So as I think about my standard, for I cannot fairly assess another’s work without a measuring stick to gauge it by, I wonder if theirs’ is similar. What if their view of right and wrong is different? What can be reconciled if they hold to diametrically opposed interpretations of the same information? A small example: French Fries should be served in large quantities, hot, having been boiled in hot animal fat oil for three and one half minutes then inundated with spiced salts and provided a large bottle of tomato ketchup. Hardly the perspective of a diabetic’s nutritionist.
Yet it may be very appealing to those who are as yet unchallenged by deteriorating aging bodily functions. Baked some would cry. No salt is the mantra of another camp.
Mayonnaise alone shouts the purist with no affinity for tomatoes. Each is correct for their specific circumstances and desires.
So when I read, and I love to read, I bring me to the reading as well as the material presented. I hope to be the harshest critic of my interpretation. I want to glean the raw impact of the authors insights and then, when I have been blatantly honest and open, then I will cram it through the filter which is me. Then I will judge and grade and classify what I have perceived as seems good for me to do. I may indeed find that the author is correct from their perspective although I do not agree.
I may see their work as vulgar and containing limited appeal or even juvenile and unworthy of consideration. I may seek to provide mitigation to allow for some discountenance between us. Or, if it is at all possible, I may adjust my previous opinion and find new grounds to support a modified understanding. As has been the case for me personally, I may need, in light of this new evidence or perspective, to retract what I had previously held to.
Having reasoned thus far with you, let me now establish for you my standard. Not of my own making but certainly by my own choice taken. Logic prevails, faith is preeminent, but the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible ARE the standard. I stand corrected by it. I gain as I draw nearer to its complete acceptance. It is the litmus test of every morality, the walled castle of every affront, the determiner of every transgression and the deliverer of every necessity.
Nothing trumps it. As the disciples declared to their Lord, “Lord, to whom shall we go? YOU have the words of eternal life”. And therein is my last caveat. All that I now know, all I possess of any worth, all that I desire, is viewed through the most prejudicial lens of eternal life. This world is not my home, we are just passing through. As a baby is nine months or less in its journey from conception unto this life we now live, even so are we, although living, in a ninety years or less journey unto the eternal existence which most of us most assuredly ascribe to.
My question is often “Does it matter?” It is a kind of “Is it a problem for me?” query. It presupposes that a higher purpose, a greater power influences my read. Because I will follow that question with what I believe to be the final qualifier, “What Then?” Where does this reasoning take us? What does it accomplish? How are we constrained by such marvelous knowledge? Does this too lead us to the wisdom which is higher than I?
As I read, all that I read must sift through the seine of the standard. It is not my standard alone but is comfortably embraced throughout the ages and by many contemporaries. How we read is with an eye on eternity. What we read is consumed or discarded within the template of the standard which has made us who we are. We waste, we gain, we discover, we repeat, all according to the fit which we enjoy in the standard. Do we make a difference? Often we do. Often we do.