It's Easy to Tune Out

 

I have a problem.  When I read, I cease to hear things around me on a conscious level.  I think it stems from when I was a child.  I grew up in a family of ten children, so if I wanted to be able to read, I had to be able to concentrate even when a lot of noise was going on.

So, I learned to tune things out.

Saturday, we went to the local library for the first time.  It is amazing!  I picked up eight books and then we came home.  I read a bit on Saturday, and then I finished two more yesterday.

A few times yesterday Grig tried to talk to me, but I didn't notice until halfway through the conversation.

This is how it goes:

A movie is playing in my head.  It's intensely interesting.  I'm part of the characters even as I'm watching them.  I know their thoughts and their feelings, and I am part of those too.  Suddenly, like a swimmer deep under water, I notice something on the surface.  I struggle to break away from the fascinating world underneath the water.  It is a difficult struggle and suddenly I'm free to hear....

"...and if they don't get it figured out soon, there's going to be trouble."

I shake my head and realize that my husband has been talking to me for the last ten minutes.  I quickly search my subconscious of the last few moments and am able to pick up the gist of the conversation.

Quickly I apologized and asked him to repeat a few things, telling him that it was hard for me to hear other things when I was reading.  I do pretty well with reading and watching the baby.  If I put forth effort to pay attention to those around me, I can sometimes do two things at once.  However, once Grig gets home, my mind recognizes that there is someone else around to help and it takes a vacation.

This is why I don't read that much anymore. 

I think in life we sometimes get so focused that we don't notice the things going around us. We become trapped in our own little worlds and we turn other people into characters in our story.  Therefore, they are supposed to act a certain way, behave in a set pattern, and never do anything that would surprise us.  Fortunately, people are real.  They make mistakes and they make their own choices.  We have no control over them, but we can appreciate the wonderful diversity that they bring into our lives.

Books, computer games, and other distractions are fun.  However, they should never replace or get in the way of the truly important things in our lives.  I'm still struggling to learn that.

It's not so easy to always be there for those around you.  It's easy to tune things out.  However, the satisfaction that we gain from being tuned in will far exceed any story that any author could conceive.

Real life is better than fiction, because we can choose who we will become.  It will always have unexpected twists and turns and there will be REAL risks.  We can choose how we react to others and how we spend our time.

I just pray that we all spend it on what truly matters so that we don't look back at the end of our story and say, "What a boring book!"  

Bedtime Stories

Ever since Kevin was born, Grig has been trying to read him bedtime stories every night.  Some nights we're better at it than others, but we've tried to be consistent.  At first, it was easy because Kevin couldn't move so he had to sit still to listen to the stories.  Grig is a very expressive reader and I rarely hear the same story twice, even when he's reading the same book!  Grig often changes the story to make it more entertaining.  Even though Kevin probably really didn't care at that age, we all still enjoyed the time together. 

Then came the time when Kevin would no longer sit still and really wasn't interested in the cardboard things that didn't move.  He wanted to be active, and it became harder to read to him.  Short stories were key during this stage.  The faster the pages turned, the more Kevin cared.

Finally, we reached a new level.  Kevin loves books now!  His current favorite is one that my parents gave us when he was born.  It's called Eight Silly Monkeys.  It's basically Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed but with a clever twist.  The monkeys' heads are also sticking out of the book so Kevin can touch them.  He loves the rhyme.  Every time we start, he sits down and begins to bob his head up and down, which is his version of dancing.  Then he slaps the book in time to the rhythm and likes to help turn the pages.  He also loves a Mother Goose Rhyme book that we have.  Rhymes and rhythms seem to be the current trend, but he also likes books about him.

We've made an effort to help our son enjoy reading because it is something that Grig and I enjoy very much.  Grig is a freelance Editor for beginning authors and he majored in Creative Writing.  I write books in my spare time as well.  We want our children to love to read, because it is something we love so much.

We also have a lot of books for them to read.  We wouldn't want them to go to waste.  Reading is something that our family has put a high priority on.  I have the theory that there is no one on this earth who doesn't enjoy reading.  People who think that they don't like it just haven't found the right book yet.

During my college years, I had a roommate who told me she hates reading.  That just wouldn't do!  So, every night I tried to read to her out of Percy Jackson; The Lightning Thief.  She started getting into it.  However, the semester got busy, and it didn't look like I would have time to finish it with her.  I had told her that when we finished it, I would buy us icecream and we would watch the movie, and so she took it upon herself to finish it on her own time!  That was better than anything I could have hoped for.  She liked the book, and she spent the whole movie complaining about how different it was from the book.

Ah, true success.  A budding reader in the making.  She even took the next book in the series to start reading, but I don't think she finished it before I got married and moved out with all of my books.

If you think you don't like reading, try a different book.  Harry Potter (though I do have some issues with the series) has done wonders for the youth of the next generation.  I think that series has done more to promote reading amongst children than any other book series ever!  That's quite an achievement.

If you keep exploring, you're bound to find a series you like.  Once you do, reading will cease to become a chore and will become an adventure!
 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

 For Christmas, my husband wanted Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.  I'd never read the book before, but it fit into our Christmas budget, so I got it for him.  Yesterday, while I was putting Adam down for a nap I began to read it.

Pretty heavy book.  It reminded me a bit of Brave New World but cleaner.  However, the depressing futuristic view of society was similar.  The premise is this:

The main character is a fireman, a man who the government pays to start fires.  And what do firemen burn?  They burn books.  Books are controversial and offend minorities, so it's just easier for everyone if they don't have to think.  Society is at a point where people like instantaneous gratification and so every second of every moment they are bombarded with images and are constantly doing 'things'.  Everyone is pumped full of facts and knowledge, but none of those facts require a person to think.  Everyone is meant to be the same so that no one ever disagrees, because controversy makes you unhappy.  People live their lives in fantasy worlds where the interactive television has become family and is more important than the family actually living in your home.  Children are a hobby, and if you do bother to have them, you ship them off to school nearly from the cradle.

The book follows the journey of the main character as he begins to realize that though his society is meant to erase unhappiness, he is not happy and something is missing from his life. 

That's all I want to say about the plot.  I can't say I really enjoyed this book.  I liked it.  It was very well written and very interesting, but depressing.  My husband Grig loves Ray Bradbury.  Though I would recommend this book as one that people should probably read and one I will probably read again, I can't say that it is one that brought me boundless happiness.  The ending wasn't necessarily depressing and it left me feeling hopeful, but reading books about 'bleak, dystopian futures' (as the amazon description put it) always makes me feel a little sad.  Obviously it was easy to see the comparison between our society and the one in the book, but at the same time the thought of living in a society like that feels me with a sense of dread and possibly fear.

However, I do take comfort in the fact that if our society every really got even close to being that bad, that the Savior's second coming would occur long before that.  That may seem strange that that's my comfort, but it is.

The book made me think a lot about the future, but I know that as I keep God's commandments, everything will be okay and our family will be protected and taken care of.

So, if you want a thought-provoking, well-written, and intriguing read, pick up Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  If you want to feel happy, go watch My Little Pony.