One of the most encouraging realizations in life is to look back on a past weakness in yourself and then trace how it led to something good that you wouldn’t have otherwise gained or experienced but for possessing that flaw. For myself, I’m thinking of my extreme self-consciousness when I was younger, which made socializing very difficult. The good thing it led to was a collection of three activities that occupy much of my private life and have been invaluable in preparing me for the rigors of navigating the world.
These are my “when-in-doubt” or “go-to” activities when I am faced with any number of negative feelings: boredom, apathy, self-pity, anxiety, etc. They are 1) Reading, 2) Playing guitar, and 3) Kettlebell workouts. I touched on my connection with the guitar previously, and this essay focuses on reading.
One of the pitfalls I am most susceptible to, which I imagine I share with other introverts, is self-centered isolationism. I get so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I start to feel as if my own little world is all there is. Limited as I am, it is a cramped and narrow world that starts to feel more like a prison than a home. My problems grow, not in reality, but in my perspective.
One cure for this is to get out and interact with someone face-to-face. Another is to do so through the mediating pages of a book. Like a good conversation that absorbs your attention, reading takes you out of yourself. It reminds you that yours are not the only, or even biggest, problems or the most profound thoughts. It does not fix our legitimate issues, but it does, at a minimum, offer some perspective.
But reading a good book is about so much more than mere distraction. It is soul-nourishing. I was an infantryman in an Army Ranger battalion in my late teens. One of my most vivid memories is of a month-long training exercise where every spare moment found me absorbed in a collection of C. S. Lewis’ greatest works. Any other book would have been a pleasant distraction, but in reading this particular book I had the sense that my soul was consuming something truly good and life-giving. It wasn't just that I was occupying my mind with something other than my own hardships. I was strengthening it for the next mission.
This is a sign of a great book and one worth returning to time and time again, the sense that something good is conveyed by the author. You come away with a renewed sense of purpose, a heightened awareness of the reality of the moral landscape, and an appreciation of all the possibilities that come with that realization. Because the more aware we are of goodness as a reality, the greater our conviction that we can be a part of that goodness and that our contribution is meaningful. This is the impetus we need to grow, explore, and develop in both what is universally good and, consequently, what is uniquely good about ourselves.
I'm convinced that this awareness of the good and the part we have to play in it is a large part of what makes J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth stories so enduring. In reading them one gets the sense that there are things worth doing regardless of whether there is much chance of success. We see that to do one’s duty is good in and of itself and, while one may hope and strive for good outcomes, one must not neglect one’s duty for the lack of assurance that everything will work out the way we want it to.
I've experienced this sense, that there is good worth pursuing for its own sake, in the fantasies of George MacDonald, the paradoxes of G. K. Chesterton, the historical fiction of Steven Pressfield, and even the political philosophical writings of Angelo Codevilla. These authors, who speak to me on a deeper level than most writers do, may not appeal to everyone given our individual differences in taste. But the thread that runs through all of their writings is that good exists, it is worth pursuing for its own sake, and what it means to be human is discovered in that pursuit.
It is easy to feel that instead of reading one should be doing something more “productive.” When we read we affect nothing in the physical world and, in a culture that tends to glorify the material over the intangible, this can seem like a waste of time. But what could be more productive than tending to one’s soul? What better for self-cultivation than an awareness of reality outside one’s own direct observation? What more useful in working at other tasks than a clear, inquisitive, and nourished mind? What more worthwhile than a greater understanding of the good?