I used to get completely, utterly lost in books. To this day when a ray of summer sun slides buttery warmth onto my warm I think back to hot days in front of bedroom blinds that didn't fully shut, thin slices of light painting stripes onto my Justice t-shirt as I zombie-stared into pages and pages of ink, probably my hundredth or so in the last hour. The Encyclopedia Browns, Judy Blume, Dork Diaries, the Calvin and Hobbes strips and even, at some point, The Alchemist (which I gather is not very highly regarded in the literature community anymore... well, 10-year-old me couldn't care less, it had sensory words and I was going to let them etch a 3D model of this mysterious world into my brain). It became an issue to my mother, though the reason why I still do not know. As far as I was concerned this was the best possible addiction for a kid to have. My vocabulary was amazing. I was a spelling bee champion. Most importantly, I loved writing myself; for the rest of my life I prided myself on being excellent at written communication and even better at putting the perfect words to the less conveyable parts of living. A friend, reading a short story I wrote in middle school, once described my writing to be as satisfyingly graceful as "a light shining through a jewel" (hi Ann, if you see this, it's been a while).

‍

I can't really pinpoint when this thirst for written enrichment, for story, faded into a forgotten muscle memory. I can only remember snapshots: spending my middle school days doing homework for hours. I'd gotten into one of the most coveted G&T magnet schools in the country... this was only the start of the workload. When I was free I don't remember books devouring my time, though I'm sure I still read some classics by high school, but rather the rich 2010s Minecraft YouTuber culture. Well, actually, I guess I did read, just on a screen, and with a flashing TUMBLR or WATTPAD logo on top. Another memory from way earlier: my mom taking away an iPad with at least an hour of Fruit Ninja elapsed on it, and when I looked at her incredulously, she said, "Go read! I used to have to beg you to not walk into the walls because a book was in your hand!" I think I opted to play with Barbies instead.

It's not that I didn't want to read. I tried my best to make the assigned books in English class a personal endeavor. But... how do you make an assigned reading feel that way? It's one thing to ebb and flow in the river of a writer's words, not quite sure where it's taking you, not quite sure when you'll hear a car horn or have a thought all too real that snaps you out of your immersion, much like one of those paradoxical sort of dreams where you spontaneously remember you're dreaming and wake up. It's another to try and immerse yourself in that knowing that you're on the clock because an assignment based on the chapter is due at midnight, and you're smooshed between math homework and studying chemistry, and you're kind of reading but at the same time the clock is ticking so you skim for an acceptable answer to the discussion prompt. You get the message of the book but not really a kinship with it. Actually, every single book I read and remotely enjoyed for class - Dorian Grey, Pride and Prejudice, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Paradise Lost, Cloud Atlas - I have put on my reading list once again because I just know that I will enjoy them much more now that Google Classroom isn't yelling at me to.

And how much I wished someone would just let me read without feeling guilty. Without thinking of the tradeoff between this deliciously crafted chapter and studying for an extra 3% on a biology exam. I yearned for the days of gulping down hundreds of pages in a day like it was nothing.

Because it wasn't nothing, was it? To this day I still remember sparse but very detailed pieces of every story I have ever read (yes, nonfiction counts as story, real life is actually the best story). There is some serious expansion of the mind that comes with absorbing written information with such enthusiasm, one that you can't get anywhere else. Every word you read inspires words you say. Every new experience you get to take on through the vehicle of a book pushes the boundaries of what you can imagine, and then, of everything you believe you can do. I started embracing my dual love for the humanities and for medicine after encountering the late Dr. Paul Kalanithi's polymath-neurosurgeon-poet mind in When Breath Becomes Air.

"But it is still a greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas's book of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in m power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country." - Frankenstein. Robert Walton writing about his drive to voyage deriving from the literature he consumed as an adolescent.

I think I continued telling stories. I was on the speech team, wrote for the school's satirical paper, and tended to explain all my experiences in exemplary detail with a clear arc of suspense-tension-release. But I felt it over time: I was running out of juice. My language lost its playful experimentation. My vocabulary was still great, but it was, of course, predominated by what I consumed: the language of textbooks, New York grit, and Gen Z slang. Not bad things. But there was no core tying them together. There was no me. There was no art in what I was saying anymore the way I had spoken like a jewel on a Google Doc in 2018. There was formula, stand-up comedy, and a layer of corporate speak. Was that who I was now? A funny smooth-talker? What happened?

This time I can pinpoint when I decided enough was enough. It wasn't the summer I decided I'd read at least 30 books by the end (that did not happen, but I did get more than 30 gym sessions in for the first time ever). It was when I was reorganizing my bookshelf for Fall cleaning (my version of the spring... every season deserves its hygiene, OK?) and piled up all the books I was going to donate. I looked at the ones I had kept by the end: The Power of Crisis, Easternization, Naked Economics... and a sudden thought occurred to me. If someone walked into this room and looked at this bookshelf without knowing a single thing about me, what would they assume?

A Political Science-savvy comedian? Hm. Maybe that's not far off.

But maybe... brash. Or less in touch with emotions, I don't know. I looked at the books I kept and while they all meant something profound to me, there was something missing.

The poetry.

The prose.

The jewel-like quality there is no other word for.

I looked back at the pile haphazardly building up by my dresser. The Judy Blume books whose authentic pre-teen dialogue sticks to my brain in random subway moments. A dripping juxtaposition of morality in Dorian Grey with a grayscale hue of writing I had found nowhere else. I picked up Frankenstein, which one of my mom's friends had given me in a box of other hand-me-down classics. I wasn't a fan of the cover when I was younger - an anatomical human jaw with a single strip of flesh clinging onto a set of chomping teeth - so I never really got to it. I thought I knew Frankenstein, anyway. But now that I was older, a young adult with deeper context as to how quintessential these classic stories are to every other story we tell, I wanted to not assume that anymore. I began to read.

Of course it was difficult. Let me tell you, if you're trying to ease back into the reading habit, Mary Shelley is a heck of a way to start. I actually went back in for a second read after I was more used to parsing through velvety words. 

That effort brought me back to another time I had crunched my brain for words: my speech & debate coach and person-who-changed-my-life, Dico, started making us read Economist articles after a certain point of our training... these political-finance-jargon-y stacks of high quality world events analysis that completely frustrated us to read. But I'll never forget their comments on this: "Your muscles burn when you work out. That means they're growing. Your brain is a muscle. If it hurts while you read this, that means it's working, and you'll get better at it with time." Dico had worked with young debaters who often didn't have the same socioeconomic advantages as others on the circuit, and he understood one fundamental thing that I have appreciated deep-down since my Calvin and Hobbes days and only actively brought to the forefront now: reading enriches the mind more than any bank account could. If we could get through the same pages that financial analysts paid well over $300 for, then that would serve us for the rest of our lives. And we did.

I'd like to adapt this philosophy a little bit (sorry, Dico, I know that was your major). I think it matters that most people don't want to read anymore. We have a much more convenient alternative that serves our needs, entertainment, and stories, and it might just be the thing you're reading this on right now. Yet it's exactly that reaching for the convenient, the echo chamber of the Internet, the bumping of headlines that got the most clicks and not the most insightful news, that somehow keeps our minds limited despite having a global archive of content at our fingertips. Andrew Keen called it an "endless jungle of mediocrity" win his analysis The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture. I won't comment on the internet being a tool or a devil, but I will say this: in my time at elite institutions, with big thinkers in UN-based discussions, and with the young people around me who have the confidence to define their lives and start their own initiatives... I don't think they got there from Reddit forums alone. There is a certain foundation of knowledge there that had to come from books, usually brought upon by their parents early on or by a situation where books where one's only friends.

Yet a fifth of Americans are illiterate. What does that say?

Perhaps I'm extrapolating a bit much. Going back to me.

A few days of breaking in and two book recommendations later, I was in full swing. I would hop onto the bus and excitedly settle in to slurp up a chapter, only stopping when there was a backlog of emotion to process through, and then throwing in a thin stack of post-its to be used as a bookmark-slash-annotation tool. When Breath Becomes Air. Dust and Conscience. Born a Crime, again. Heck, I even took more glee in the mandated texts for my nuclear politics class, 100 pages of deterrence theory jargon becoming a story for me swim through rather than a cluster of unreliable vocabulary (do you know how strange it is to tell your friends about the declassified Cold War plans? Real mood killer...).

But, most importantly, I found my words flowing again with a distinctly familiar playfulness. Do you ever say a fancy word that fits the situation simply because? It's like saying "I love you" for the first time to someone, except instead of someone, it is a word, a representation of a far more abstract conceptualization, one shiny new rock to add to your collection until your collection becomes a beach from which you may express yourself more truly. It feels unfamiliar but fun, until you have said the word enough times for it to become integrated into your life. Uncouth, predilection, ebullient. Who says that? Well, you do, or rather you can, just after leaping the first hurdle of feeling like this word isn't yours to say.

Because it is. Words are yours. You just have to find them. It's the best scavenger hunt I've ever encountered.

When was the last time you really read?

‍