Book Have you ever laid your eyes on those beautiful, gilded spines and wondered what magic do they inhibit? Why is everyone who has ever laid their eyes on a good book ever so hopelessly in love with their subtle charm?
A book can accommodate all kinds of information, stories, thoughts and feelings unlike anything else in this world. Can words, paragraphs, and fiction be all that beneficial for you? They definitely can, and books are a timeless form of both — entertainment and information.
In fact, reading has been the only form of personal entertainment for years, and perhaps, this is why it has been in the spotlight for decades. Reading has survived the years, and fortunately, the benefits of reading have survived right along with it. Here’s a chest of reasons why reading is good for you:
- The Much Needed Exposure
Reading opens up to you, a world brimming with brand new information, new solutions to the problems that haunt you and, perhaps, new ways to achieve your goals. You might actually explore something you really like and it may end up life’s sole endeavour or your road to success in the future. Exploration begins the day you flip open a book and start reading and comprehending.
- Inculcates Imagination
Reading exposes you to a world of imagination. It shows you how ‘impossibilities’ are but unexplored possibilities. The worlds illustrated in books, as well as someone else’s views and opinions, will help you expand your understanding of what is possible. Whilst you read, you paint pictures out of those descriptions in your head, as opposed to having the image placed in front of you when you watch a movie. As you read, you explore a different angle to perceive something you’ve known for long; on how different actions lead to different results. Books help you structure new solutions and answers.
- All That Focus!
As you read, you focus on one stint and, in the process, you train your mind & body to slow down & relax. You’re in complete silence because reading connects directly to your brain. In silence, you seek for more. Your brain is clear and focuses.
Sitting down with a book takes extended periods of focus and concentration. Being fully engrossed in a book involves cutting off from the outside world and immersing yourself into the text which, over time, will protract your attention span. This, in turn, enables you to concentrate on other activities too because, now, you are used to doing it.
- Memory-matters
When you read a book, you are taking in all that the book is about. People, places, things, thought and actions. When you read you are using the memory muscles of your cerebrum thus, helping your memory in the long run. Furthermore, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading provides you with a pause button for comprehension and insight.
- Gloss Your Verbal Abilities
Fluency is defined as the ability to speak, write or express oneself easily and articulately. Those who read tend to have a wider range of words to express how they feel, and to get their point across. The more volumes you consume, the more you hone your expression & vocabulary and the more fluent you become.
- Man: A Social Being
The more you read, the more you understand: from the alpha to the omega of things. Reading also fosters your understanding of the rules of life, for you to adapt, adopt and accommodate to the society better thereby making you a better, more responsible citizen.
An NEA study explains how people who read for pleasure are more likely to visit museums and attend concerts than those who don’t. Avid readers are also almost three times as likely to volunteer and perform charity work.
Readers are active participants in the world around them and that engagement is critical to individual and social well-being.
- The Road To Self-Discovery
With the endless amount of perspectives and lives we can read about, books provide us with an opportunity to live vicariously through experiences that we are yet to undergo. While still allowing us to learn the life skills they entail. Books are the road to creating ourselves. We should read to whetstone our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy and heal our pain.
“Until you become yourself, what benefit can you be to others?”
Of all the benefits of reading mentioned so far are but an icing on the cake of the most important benefit of reading, entertainment. If it weren’t for the entertainment, reading would have been a chore; which is, quite obviously isn’t.
“Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without a doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you’re into the 30-second digital mode.” – Ken Pugh, President, Haskins Laboratories
