Just Read

When I was a boy there was a lake a half-mile up the road from our house in the county.  I wasn’t a fisherman then and I’m not a fisherman now,  but Dad had bought me a fishing pole at Kmart one evening and I was bound and determined to use it. 

It seems it was only a couple two or three times that I fetched my bright white fishing pole and the limited tackle I had gleaned from my Dad’s brimming box and headed to the lake.  I dropped my bike just off the road and hiked through a hundred yards of corn field to find the lake, and there, in the shallow area near the beaver dam, I set up and cast off.

That lake wasn’t teeming with fish by any lean standards, but there were certainly enough to go around and I sure hoped to catch something.  Of course I had no intention of catching them all.  That would be both arrogant and unreasonable.  Just imagine if I did catch every fish in the lake.  How would I transport them all back to my house?  And if I somehow cleared that hurdle, what would I do with them all?  I could never consume them all.  I doubt I would even have been able to give them all away before they began to stink up the neighborhood.  Ridiculous to even imagine, huh? 

Of course I had no intention of catching them all.  In fact, as I recall, I only ever caught one or two.  Certainly no feast for the family.  Thinking back on those times now, it occurs to me that the time was a lot less about catching fish anyway.  More than that, it seems to me those times were preparing me for moments further down the road where stillness and patience would be first-hand necessities, or when waiting and watching would become my only route of action. 

Every couple months we get a magazine in the mail from a well-known and well respected international family ministry.  I have learned to appreciate it more as the years have passed and as our family has aged.  It arrives ripe with thoughts and ideas from experts and novices alike on all imaginable issues of family life.  Here is a sampling from their winter edition...

·        5 Kid Friendly Gift Ideas

·        It’s In the Bag:  Ideas For Traveling with Kids During the Holidays

·        10 Simple Ideas For a Happier Marriage

·        How to Stink Less at Gift-giving

·        Have the Christmas You Really Want:  How To Make the Most of the Season by Doing A Little Less

·        The Secret to Overcoming Hardship

·        The Road to Character:  5 Keys To Encouraging Your Kids To Do What’s Right

·        How Your Teen Thinks:  A Parent’s Guide To Understanding the Adolescent Mind

·        Walking With Grandpa:  How My Family Fostered A Deeper Connection Between Our Kids and Their Grandparents

·        Hugs, Kisses, and Stepkids:  Why Stepparents Need To Respect Physical Boundaries

Notice any themes?  It is certainly a lot of information; some more applicable to my family than others.  Likely some more applicable to your family than mine.  But do you catch the sway in every one of the article titles? 

Without exception, every title promises something for better or different or more.  And that’s just the lineup from a single magazine.  Beyond this one magazine the resources for better or different or more are innumerable; incalculable.  There are books and blogs and pamphlets and podcasts unending, all giving us 6 more ways or 10 more ideas or 4 more secrets or 12 mores steps.  Of the offering of advice – free or otherwise – there is no end. 

But something occurred to me as I was reading through those “How to’s” and “What about’s.”  What if it’s not actually all about doing what it says?

But Andy, why would they so clearly line it all out if it wasn’t intended to be acted upon?

Indeed, you have a point, and from the authors perspective he or she would hope we do what they say.  After all, it worked for them; they were successful in the doing, so we should follow in their steps.  But I’m not them, and you’re not me.

My sense has been, all those tricks and techniques worked great for the folks writing about them, and they’ll work well for folks who are wired similarly to those writing about them.  But the rest of us?  Well, we’ll be over here crumpled up in a corner on the floor buried under the bazillions of new ways and ideas, crippled by the secrets and steps, unable to do any of it all. 

So a thought to level out there for the “you’s” and “me’s” who hope for better or different or more, but just can’t live up to the high bar of all those bullet points:  What if we just focus on the reading and the learning?  

What if the actual cognitive development that happens simply in following along with our eyes and minds with the words on the page or the screen is enough?  What if we put aside the push to do everything the article says – to catch every fish in the lake – and instead just read the article and trust the simple act of reading is preparing us for something better or different or more further down the road. 

You see, there is a “smartness,” call it wisdom perhaps, which is born in us as we take in information.  It’s all being neatly filed into columns and categories in our brains.  The more we engage the discipline of reading, the more we are filling those columns and categories.  The more particular topics and various issues of interest are reviewed, those columns and categories are further reinforced.  Then when an instance or event of necessity occurs in the daily lives we live, we draw from those columns and categories for the insight to maneuver the moment well. 

All of a sudden an action comes to mind that seamlessly wove together ways and ideas and secrets and steps from a dozen articles or books read from the last dozen years, and the action itself is not specific to any single article.  You’ve just been reading, getting smarter and wiser, and quicker in your understanding and formulation of principles and practices.

How do you think the people that wrote the articles and books came up with their ways and ideas and secrets and steps?  Well, how about through a measured length of time of reading, learning, knowing, and living – all to come to calculated methods to share. 

So maybe this encouragement for you, if you’re prone to dabble in new ways and ideas and secrets and steps; which I hope we all are on some level or another…  Stop imagining that you can take in every new way and idea and secret and step, and somehow do it all to be better or different.  Stop imagining you can catch ever fish in the lake.  Just read, and know that in the act of reading alone there is born in you the increasing readiness (see the root word there?) to act wisely and rightly – in however many steps – to be better or different.