One of the first things we learned when we started going to school, with 5 or 6 years, went to read. The teachers taught us, with patience and little by little: first one letter and then another, to the Zeta; Then we discovered that the lyrics could join to form words, the words to compose phrases, the phrases ended up being pages, and the whole final set was a story that was worth knowing. Reading was, in those years, an adventure and a conquest. We felt good to sit in front of a book and unravel the story it contained. And yet, a few years later, it seems that all that has been forgotten.
We do not read, or we read little. And we look for excuses: work, family, computer, mobile devices, social networks ..., it seems that any activity goes ahead of reading. It may even seem to us that at our age we no longer need to read, that a review of the press of the day or what our friends on Facebook or Twitter has enough. What a great mistake. When Mario Vargas Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, he began his award acceptance speech with these two phrases: “I learned to read at age five. It is the most important thing that has happened to me in life. ”
Read orders the mind. Reading is a source of health, and also of culture and wisdom. Makes imagination, stimulates fantasy. It moves us to exciting worlds, unknown universes. Enriches our way of expressing ourselves, which helps us give us security in our relationships with others. Reading reduces stress levels, helps us order ideas and relate concepts. Reading causes us to know each other better, that we ask ourselves questions about ourselves and what surrounds us. Better therapy has not been invented than a good book. To read, then.
