When I was a kid, we read cereal boxes

When I was a kid, we read cereal boxes, at least some of the time. My dad always had a newspaper delivered to our house and he would read it to keep up to date but also just to have something to talk about with other people. Some of my earliest reading memories are of reading the sports page, I was a devoted and diehard Habs fan—I cried when Patrick Roy threw his temper tantrum and said he would never play for the Canadiens again. 

Today, I am told, people “don’t read anymore” but that is simply not true. We read plenty, some of us even read cereal boxes. What has changed is the importance of what we read, the length of what we read, the amount of time we read, the mediums we read, and the intentionality behind our reading. 

It’s that last one, intentionality, that I have been reflecting on lately because I realize that the wizards behind the algorithms know full-well that we are still reading, and mostly mindlessly, and that harnessing those minutes is an opportunity to create a harvest of our minds and dollars. 

I don’t want to sounds all conspiracy theoristy but these days there is something to be said for paying attention to what we read, who wrote it and why. Something to be said for deciding the type of person we want to be and the type of person we are in the process of of becoming, and what role our racing plays in that process. 

Are we moving towards our best most flourishing and awesome selves or away from it? How would we even know? What would that person read?

Our entire lives we are in formation, the question is whether we recognize this or not, and the next obvious question is, can we design the formation or must it be in the control of others? 

I suppose when we are children we must learn certain things (reading, writing, arithmetic) and there are certain tried and true ways to teach that stuff—at least to many of us—and this sets us in a pattern/habit of passively learning what is put before us to learn. Taken too far we learn all sorts of nonsense about winners and losers, and ways to see the world that have little to do with reality. 

The image of children reading cereal boxes and fathers reading newspapers might help us if we want to improve our own reading because the image has some lessons baked in. 

Lesson 1: routine matters. A child reads a cereal box because they have a routine of sitting down in a particular place, with nothing to distract them. For the person trying to be a more consistent reader: we can select a time and place, relatively distraction free, so that whatever we choose to read can take priority. (We might notice the lack of cellphones in my late Twentieth Century childhood).

Lesson 2: in the right circumstances we will all find something to read, but whether we choose it or it chooses us matters. The child reads whatever is in front of them, they have not planned ahead, they are susceptible to whatever advertisers want them to read (it’s safe to say few us want to be that role, but eye-opening to think that when we mindlessly grab our phones that is exactly what we are doing). The adult has decided ahead of time what they will read. Selecting a newspaper they find worthy of their attention, and within that certain writers they prefer, or topics they choose to focus on or ignore. For the person trying to be a more consistent reader: select ahead of time what you will read. Know why you want to read. You can change over time, but set your own trajectory. 

I have found both of these lessons to be true for me. I am a man of faith so I think regularly spending time in scripture is an important and formative part of becoming who I want to be.  Like many, bible reading can be struggle despite my best intentions. I am not saying you too need to read the bible (though you might give it a go) I am simply using this as an example of someone wanting to be a better more consistent reader. 

Anyways, I read the bible first thing after my morning workout. I have coffee, I always read in the same place, there is no phone open, all of this helps me read (and clearly I have selected what I am to read). At breakfast I read the Ottawa Citizen which I access for free thanks to our wonderful library. During the day I am lucky enough to be in a job that includes some non-fiction reading. In the evening I read fiction before bed. 

My reading habits confirm these breakfast table lessons from my childhood; I dream of who I want to be, and think about who I am becoming, and what I might read to make me more godly, patient, loving, compassionate, healthy, and creative; then I select a time and place and the books that seem likely to help me along the way. All of this is a sort of greasing the tracks to make easier that which I want to do but know can be hard. It feels like a little act of rebellion, an assertion of my individuality, whoever you are I know this about you: you are meant for more than reading cereal boxes.