When I was a wee little kid, I would pull tiny red books off the shelf in our family room and pretend to read them. My summer vacations from elementary and middle school were filled with piles and piles of books with pauses for food and bike rides and the like. And perhaps my greatest beef with college was that it cut into my personal reading time, though that was greatly tempered by the fun of the assigned reads. (My degree is in psychology, and it was only my own poor planning that kept me from a minor in English, as many classes as I took.)
Point is, being a reader is a big part of my identity. I am a reader, says some part of me.
And yet, I don’t allot much time to reading anymore. Instead, I look frequently at my bookcase filled mostly with to-read books, some of which I’ve schlepped to at least three homes. I look at them and I feel discomfort.
They weigh on me, these unread books. This thing that I love, reading, weighs on me. It’s a should that sits on my shoulders and fuels the gremlin voice that says I’m wrong or bad to not read more, a voice turbo-charged by experts (oh, how I debated quote marks around that title!) who say voracious reading is critical to a good life.
Funny thing (not haha funny but, you know, huh funny) about this kind of discomfort is that it all stems from my attachment to the identity of being a reader and my attachment from wanting to do life the right way.
But good golly, if there isn’t a whole lot more to my identity than being a reader, and if there aren’t infinite varieties of perfectly lovely, healthy, actionable forms of living.
And so starting today, I think I’ll take another tack. I’ll work to loosen my grip on having the identity of a reader and instead see myself more clearly and honestly, which is as a person who loves to read books and, even more so, loves to learn, period. Learn from books, yes, and also magazines, blogs, podcasts, conversations, and even tapping into my own inner recesses and resources. I’ll allow myself to delight in all the ways I find information and inspiration and fulfilling entertainment, and stop letting the weight of the should dampen that joy or suck energy from my pursuit of self-education in all its enlivening forms.
And you, my friend? Is there a piece of your identity, a heavy should, that is sucking energy from your best life? What belief about yourself or your life could you challenge today and, in that way, find more joy and ease?
I’d love to hear about it!