I talk a lot about reading because it's important. Because when you don't read, you're stuck forever in an endless loop of the present, when all of your thoughts and ideas and convictions are those that you're getting from people you talk to every day.
Who are, incidentally, just like you. Because one of the big shocks of life - for those who manage to ever ponder it - is how little we talk to people who think differently than us. And even on those rare occasions when we have a conversation with someone different, that person is still someone alive now, breathing the same air you are, and like 99% of the population, thinking essentially what you are thinking.
How to change that. First off, it's not easy. It takes real energy and effort to get outside our bubble, and it's usually not very comfortable. We like having our thoughts and prejudices reinforced, and if we were honest, we don't want them to go away.
Plato addressed this problem about 2500 years ago. Some things don't change. He put forth what is often called the cave allegory. And in that story, you've got people who are chained inside a cave and they think that's the whole of existence and all they can see are shadows from things happening outside, and their thoughts and ideas are about what those shadows mean, and that's the only way they can ponder this since no one is able to go outside the cave and see the real stuff.
Until the philosopher does just that. And while Plato here means himself, the "philosopher" is anyone with the guts and spine to get out of the cave and see the real world for himself.
And part of the way you emerge from the cave is by reading. Because in a very real sense, a book is a time machine.
In any given generation, there will be perhaps a few dozen really brilliant individuals and even those are seldom known until long after they are dead. And few people will have the opportunity to meet, much less interact with any of those minds.
But you can read a book. There's nothing magical about books. Every year, thousands of banal, stupid books are published. Most of them forgettable, and even more quickly forgotten. But the books that stand the test of time stay with us, and in our time are the least expensive they have ever been in the history of mankind.
I will never talk with Plato, but I can read his works. Likewise St Paul or Aquinas or Austen or Jefferson. I can read the works of these masters, mentally interact with them, and learn.
And just possibly, I will leave the cave, if only for a few minutes. Leave the cave of my time boundedness, and see something of a greater reality through greater minds than my own.
So here's your chance. See what it's like to travel through time. Pick up one of those really difficult books and start reading and keep at it for a while. If you think you don't have time, read one page a day. . What you will often find is that these great books - truly great books - are often easier than you ever imagined. You will find yourself puzzled and infuriated and sometimes confused. But you will come away different. A man or woman who has left the cave and seen a better vision of the world.