On Coming To Reading Late In Life: Yet Another Letter To Young People
By Romi Mahajan
23 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org
I read. When people ask me what I enjoy the most I dim their enthusiasm by saying that reading is the most enjoyable solitary act for me. I’m not a misanthrope or particularly unsocial so of course the joys of being surrounded by family and friends or having a beer on a patio in the middle of London watching people walk by are induplicable but there is no joy more individually profound for me than reading.
People who have known me during the last two decades know this about me and consider it fundamental to me (for better or worse.) But for people like my older brother who had the reading bug from 4 or 5, it comes as a shock because I had almost no interest in any deep reading until my mid-twenties. Sure, I was a decent student in school and college (barely decent there) but I always found a way to manage-by-minimal effort. Times were different then I suppose and a decent SAT score coupled with a non-idiotic essay and decent grades got me into UC Berkeley; there, I managed to squander my presence in one of the most delightful places in the world- a tree lined, forested, and gorgeous campus with libraries everywhere you turned, Nobel Laureates running about, and books to be had anywhere and everywhere. I took little part in this-- proving of course that youth is wasted on the young.
My lost decades were lost not because I got to my career later than many or because I wasn’t a Vice-President, Professor, or Author by my mid-twenties but because I was intellectually lazy and did not devour books simply because they were books. I barely even cherry-picked, indulging myself in having a veneer of intellectualism because I could very cleverly indulge in what I now call “back of the book scholarship.”
When at 44 I am stressed beyond belief because of what I do not know, because of understanding only now that I lost decades of bliss, I am forced to write a plea to those younger than me and enamored of the same metaphorical baubles, to read more. Read, read, read. Indulge in what is in many sense the most perfect joy.
This stress takes me to bookstores often. There, the stress gives way to a release of endorphins, a sort of high knowing that it is still possible to sit quietly, read deeply, and help create wisdom.
No doubt this is not just about inner happiness but also about ego, about the desire to spread one’s ideas to others in a form that is digestible and aesthetic at once. There is still something incredibly magical about books. Pun intended, books kindle more feeling in me than anything other than people and politics. There is no doubt a mix of happiness and desire in this love of books.
I came to reading late in life. Certainly “later” than I should have. And I still pay the price for it.
Please don’t do that to yourself.
Romi Mahajan is the founder of KKM Group a marketing firm, an author, an investor, and an activist. His career is a storied one, including spending 9 years at Microsoft and being the first CMO of Ascentium, an award-winning digital agency. Romi has also authored two books on marketing- the latest one can be found here . A prolific writer and speaker, Mahajan lives in Bellevue, WA, with his wife and two kids. Mahajan graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, at the age of 19. He can be reached at [email protected]