I believe in reading. That’s no secret, huh?

Books, newspapers, circulars, catalogues. Signs, maps, instructions, manuals. The world of reading, the access it creates -it’s unsurpassable. If I had to name one activity, one interest, that has aided me in developing into the successful, striving, curious, critical, and loving person I am today? Reading, hands down, number one.

Reading gets the trophy.

So when I read an article in my new favorite thoughtful-living magazine, Taproot, where a father considers the potential ramifications of his non-reading seven-year-old son, I felt horrified. It wasn’t that the author neglected his obligations as a parent, or even that the child would lag behind his peers in education or access. To me, reading is a sense, and here was this family, blissfully bypassing the opportunity for one of its members to partake.

For me, not-reading seemed, perhaps a little over-dramatically, a world without words. ‘Til my partner sagely stepped in and put the brakes on my rant. He informed me that some people hold by the philosophy that learning to read fixes the way people think. That it sets worn paths for the mind to follow. I wanted to shout, I love those paths! Sign me up for the tour to poetry, to fantasy, to romance and philosophy and cooking!

But when I thought a little about how I experience the world though movement, relating, soundless or soundfilled watching and connecting. And then I thought, hmmm …

The story goes: when I learned to read.

But that tale isn’t complete because, for a lot of us, learning to read doesn’t end in identifying as a “reader.”

Instead, we might say: oh, I wish I read more.

Or: Too bad I don’t have more time/there aren’t more hours in a day/if I were on permanent vacation, then I’d become a reader! Yeah. When I retire.

Or: I only read non-fiction/newspapers/magazines.

Apparently, if we can’t gobble twelve novels in a fortnight, we aren’t truly readers. I guess we’re dabblers? We’re book hobbyists, who are admittedly less than devoted to our hobby. With the television and training for a marathon and practicing with the band and cooking seven nights a week for the kids, putting in extra hours at work, we never reach the Reading Ideal.

Which is what?

The story goes: sometimes it doesn’t matter how you fill your time. When reading gets you, it has you. You pick up one book. You pick up another. Soon, you’ve read so many, they’re melding together in your mind.

A good friend of mine once grabbed a stack of books he found in a parking lot. One seemed interesting, so he read it. Which of course led to reading another. Another. You see . . . reading got him.

A co-worker’s husband devoted himself to one non-fiction account of local color and then reading got him. He descended into a frenzy. Anything he could get his hands on. Book after book. He hasn’t stopped yet.

The story goes: reading might eventually let you go. Who knows when it’ll pick you up again. Don’t prepare. If it happens, then it does. Go with it.