Reading is whatever you would like for it to be. It can mean a long awaited vacation at your fingertips. Perhaps it is a magical garden, a cold case revisited with a harrowing new discovery or even a chance to live vicariously through a painter in Paris. An opportunity to start over, to dream.
The wonder doesn’t just reside within each page, but those who have held them before. There is art and appreciation in the notes carefully jotted in the margins. Curiosity in the nearly illegible lines erased, but faintly visible. A coffee ring on one page or a few rips along the way.
More times than not if you buy a used book you will find a carefully placed bookmark. Perhaps the reader was fond of bending down the corners to mark where they had stopped reading. These placements or bookmarks are a mystery. Within them are many questions. Did they stop there with the intention of picking up the book later, but never got the chance? Were they so unimpressed that they marked where they stopped and didn’t care enough about saving their bookmark for their next read?
Perhaps where they stopped will be where you decide to keep going. You will become more invested and wish they had just kept reading. The arts of reading and living are similar. Some days it is hard to persist and keep going. Though we continue to try because we want to see it through until the end. We pick up the book and read beyond the heartache, the lull or the hardship.
It can be easy to put the book down, but I encourage you to see it through until the very end. Turn the page, because one difficult chapter will not prevent your story from persisting.
