In this post I want to analyze the following questions:
1. Is it a personal crisis (to have used the term “existential” would have been too pretentious) in which the subject, after a long journey of contemplation of new ideas, different points of view and stories fruit of human intellect, is not able to continue in that state of “open-mindedness” and therefore feels disconnected from the paper?
2. Or is it nothing more than the abandonment of a habit, either as a result of laziness or the consumption of another type of more gratifying and/or instantaneous entertainment, and which, like any other, is difficult to reincorporate into the daily routine.
# A small introduction to the act of writing, as well as to that of reading.
Let’s start with the first one, much more extensive and that just thinking about it is making me feel a certain vertigo.
A way of thinking about the act of reading that seems to me very poetic and realistic is how the author of the book opens a portal to his most personal dimension, that of his ideas and mental processes.
I consider this one of the most beautiful characteristics of the human being. The writer puts his ideas on paper, eliminating the figure of the receiver, since, when writing (we will not take into account the authors of books whose only purpose is economic profit) we do not depend on him and therefore certain energy used in the process of “translation of understanding from one paradigm to another” can now be used to take the ideas to an even more complex plane, so that when putting them on paper, one can feel proud that the information lost in the “thought to words” channel has been minimized. This allows the writer to enter a state of purely egocentric ecstasy as he sees himself capable of expressing himself as he is.
This, then, is a brief introduction to the pleasure of reading, and that is that it allows us to enrich ourselves from what has been mentally achieved by another person. However, how is it that, despite all the benefits of this habit, those of us who consider ourselves readers are potential victims of reader burnout?
# The rupture of the bridge between the information in the book and the reader.
It is well known that in different moods, physical conditions and others, humans are more or less receptive to our environment. In this case, by environment I mean the ideas proposed in books.
Taking it to the real world and leaving aside the philosophical pretensions that I am carrying out in each paragraph of this post, let’s take an example.
Let’s imagine a person, Alice, a great fan of reading for as long as she can remember, but who nevertheless, due to her new job, is unable to deal with stress in a healthy way. Alice has entered a state of continuous chatter, even when she tries to relax when she gets home. Picking up a book, she finds that she is unable to concentrate, to immerse herself in it, to lose track of time. On the contrary, every 30 seconds, and without realizing it, he returns to a state of mental wandering.
We can conclude, without being psychologists, that Alice’s current conditions are not ideal to successfully carry out a reading, especially if it involves a certain degree of complexity. She is not in a state of open mind, too many tasks are running in her head and the RAM memory is limited (I wanted to make an analogy with the operation of a PC).
The reality is that the situations that could lead a person to lose the desire to read are infinite and I do not feel like giving more examples with fictitious characters named after variables commonly used in mathematics, so we will leave it (for the moment) in that yes, the reading block can be perfectly provoked by a certain situation, internal or external, that makes it difficult for you to connect with a new book.
# Or is it that we don’t want to admit that we’re lazy?
Yes, maybe reader’s block is nothing more than an invented term to add a veil of drama (I don’t know the exact word I would like to use to express myself, in my head I’m thinking of a person with certain insecurities who tries to differentiate himself before others, giving an image of a dark, inner world, bohemian). Well, what I mean is that sometimes we try to complicate things, when the reality may be much simpler.
There may be 1000 reasons why we are lazy to read. At the moment, the main enemy is the cell phone and the applications that squeeze the feeling of instant gratification, why would I spend 2 hours reading a book when in 10 minutes with the cell phone I will experience much more pleasure?
Maybe not even a substitute agent has come into play, and the reason is that by coincidence of life, several days have coincided in which you have not been able to read (because you had to study late, because you forgot the book at home, etc …). It’s funny how humans have this ability (if you want to call it that way) to lose in 3 days the habit that had taken you 5 months to implement.
What is your opinion? Do you think reader’s block is real? Thank you 🙂
by PitifulTechnician398