Reading & Running: “Run any good books lately?”

(reading should be more like walking so maybe you should slow your reading roll )

Note: This was originally written for a reading audience of high school students. Just so you know.

Ok, so reading and running really couldn’t be more different, by most standards. Reading is an intellectual pursuit--it requires the brain to make pictures out of words. Running is a physical pursuit--it requires the body’s muscles and organs to synchronize in one great effort: forward movement. They both require the brain’s direction, but for vastly different tasks. One can make you sweat; the other fall asleep (these things are pretty much total opposites). 

So, how then is reading like running? 

To start with, many people hate reading. Ditto for running. In fact, if you turn to the people closest to you right now and ask them how they feel about each of these things you will likely find this to be true of one of them, if not both. Reading takes time and concentration (two things that are in short order today). Running takes time and an ability to suffer through physical discomfort (again, two things that many people are short on). What is the result? People avoid them. They avoid reading because it is boring, tedious, uncomfortable or they simply “don’t have enough time.” They avoid running for the same reasons (and because it makes you sweat which can lead to B.O. which can lead to a decline in popularity). 

See, then,  they are the same (and different). But what if reading was more like walking. Walking isn’t so bad, right? If you ask those same people near you how they feel about going for a walk, they will probably have a more positive response. Most people enjoy walks. It isn’t usually painful, doesn’t take a lot of time, and doesn’t require you to change your clothes or take a shower afterwards to maintain your social life. 

So, how is reading like walking? Or rather, how should reading be more like walking?

First of all, reading stories is basically entering a parallel universe. By opening a book, the reader is taking a first step into another world--another experience. Page by page, chapter by chapter, the reader’s mind interprets, constructs, creates, and feels the story as it evolves. This process should not be rushed (or sprinted). It takes time to have an experience. Sometimes, you want to pause and think it over, or at least feel whatever you feel. Have you ever been in the middle of a book when you had to put it down to do other things? Maybe for a day or two even? During those days when you weren’t reading, you may have found yourself thinking about the characters, the problems. You imagined, hypothesized, fantasized about the story--just like you do about things in your real life. These pauses are opportunities to process the story and make sense of it--synchronizing the experience with your own. 

This is similar to the experience of the walker. A person taking a walk is moving through the world more slowly. The slower pace not only avoids the runner’s stinging lungs, burning muscles, and aching back, but it allows the walker to notice things: the shadows dipping a little lower with the changing season; the neighbor’s new house paint; a homeless woman dragging her cart off the trail into the thickening shrubs. The walker picks up more along the way: stories, scenes, images, information, ideas. All of these things synchronize into the walker’s own experiences of the world and become useful for understanding the world that much better. 

If, as readers, we become “walkers” and take our time to meander through the story--picking up details along the way and taking pauses to consider their value--rather than “runners” more focused on simply pushing through the pain to get to the end, we might not only get more out of the reading we do, but we might realize that we actually don’t HATE reading. In fact, we might find out that we LIKE reading.

Perhaps we should take inspiration from the pool-side signage that reads: Walk DON’T run. Be patient. Take it in. Watch your step. After all, the pool is always there, and so is your life. Dip into the story. Swim to the other end. Then get out and walk around before diving back in. It will be all the more refreshing (maybe even enlightening). Added bonus: you won’t slip and fall in an embarrassing heap of Coppertone and chlorine. 

Read like a walker. Read for pleasure. Read for your life.