We need to read AND write

So I went to Barnes & Noble the other night (needed some retail therapy) and ended up wandering aimlessly around the aisles for over an hour. I must have hit every section before I made my way over to the children’s corner. Not sure if I was feeling nostalgic or just curious as to what the youth of today was starting out to read. As I scoured shelves looking for old time Nancy Drew or Where the Sidewalk Ends, I heard this couple enter the area and couldn’t help but overhear their conversation.

            “I just want to look for a book for her, just one. Can ya’ give me a minute?” The woman sounded exasperated, almost as if she couldn’t comprehend why her companion wasn’t understanding the need to look for the perfect book. It was his response that caught me, even though I shouldn’t have been so stung.

            “You do realize kids today don’t read, right? What’s the point in getting ‘em a book if they aren’t gonna read it?” He laughed it off, but I could hear the seriousness in his questioning of her decision. That’s when it hit me, for probably the hundredth time around: No one reads.

            To this very day, society has multiple means of obtaining literature and there are numerous ways for everyone to not only read it, but share it with others and even write it themselves. I’ve been a fan of both fiction and poetry (especially recently with the increase in poetry writers in this day and age). I feel as if everyone, from as young as three or four years old, is so consumed with social media and constant technology that so much as cracking open a book or holding a writing utensil is foreign. Taking pictures for likes or approval, sharing what one is doing constantly in order to obtain recognition or sympathy has become so common in our world that anything personal, individual, or private is almost questioned such as: Should I be sharing this? What would others think? I wonder who else has done this and if what I’m doing could compare.

            We should be sharing book titles. Recommending something that hit us so deep in our bones that someone else needs to read it. We should be writing, whether it be what happened to us that very day. Thirteen years ago. What we wish would happen ten years from now, or somewhere far away, whether real or fantasy. I write because I want to impact someone. I want to write something that even one person might enjoy and recommend to another. I write poetry because sometimes my head gets so clustered that I need some relief—I need to write down these thoughts, emotions, and yearnings to keep perspective for myself. I write fiction because I want someone to be able to escape this real-world that seems more made-up than what is on the page in front of them.

            Contrary to what the young woman’s companion said in Barnes and Noble, people are reading today, whether it’s certain youth or a number of adults. There will always be those individuals that hold the written word to a higher level than others—those who wish to escape into something that is unfamiliar and in need of exploration. Walter Mosley once said, “If we are following our senses into the world created by the narrative, then we will find out new things, we will be opened to the possibility that the world is not what we thought it was. And a new world is what we need.” Mosley couldn’t be more right, especially today. Instead of taking a step forward into the future of technology, take a step back into reading fiction. You might surprise yourself.