“I had learned that patience was a supreme virtue, the most elegant, the most neglected.”
“The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet” Sylvain Tesson
Go All In.
Sounds rather like the exhortation of a sports coach contemplating a score line which needs to be overturned with only minutes left on the clock. It conjures up the arrival of the hero player sweeping past defenders to score the goals needed to win the match. Imagine my surprise to find that this is not some final incitement to go out and win but is the slogan for the UK Department for Education’s National Year of Reading.
Many in our community need no such encouragement, they are avid readers already, but many are not. Reading takes time and, in our time-starved world it is, perhaps, one of the first activities to be lost. As both France and the UK talk ever more seriously about more stringent smartphone restrictions and social media bans, this campaign for reading may well be well-timed. If you have continued to read, then I’m probably preaching to the converted and you don’t need to read what follows. I hope you bear with me.
Most people can agree that reading has the potential to bring pleasure and enjoyment. I hope that everyone has had the feeling of being gripped by a book so tightly that you can’t put it down, a book so good that you slow down as you reach the final pages just to spin the pleasure out for that little bit longer. Some will have had that glorious feeling of anticipation when a new book in a series comes out, or you discover a new author who speaks to you. Books inspire, inform, and explain. There is a reason why books have been around for so long.
As a teacher I also like books because they (well most of them) provide a clear beginning, middle and end. A story or an argument is introduced, developed, and concluded. Ambiguity can be explored, motive examined and actions explained. In order to read a book, you have to move at the author’s pace and not your own. Patience is often required. Patience is an often-overlooked virtue these days, and one that we perhaps need more of in the world. To read a book, time is required and an acceptance that we move at another’s pace, in tune with their thoughts and experiences, something that we can perhaps transfer from the page to everyday existence. How important a greater level of patience would be in making the world a better place I do not know, but as an antidote to our immediate-response existence it might make a difference. For our young people learning from reading may well allow them the opportunity to interpret their world in a new and different way.
So, I’m all in. Are you?
