The Ability to Read Is One of Life’s Greatest Gifts

I love books. I love the way they feel in my hand. Hardcover or paperback makes no difference. I love the sound and smell of a brand new book being opened for the first time. I love the excitement of reading that first word that starts me off on a new journey.

I love reading. I love the stillness of sitting with a good book. I love the portability of books. I love how my eyes scan a page and I don’t even realize it ‘cause I’m so engrossed in the images those words conjure up in my mind. I love characters that stay with me for years. I love writers who teach me how to turn a new phrase.

I also love being a reader. Readers are interesting, always gaining new facts, insights to ponder and stories to share. Readers also write well and have a large and colorful, vocabulary.

Both of my kids love books. My little one loves to study the pictures and now is just beginning to read. He can recognize common three letter words and memorizes entire books from repetitive reading. My older one and I share novels. We both love action adventure, military suspense, mysteries, pop fiction, etc. We talk about what we liked and disliked in detail. Reading allows us to connect when sometimes we’re completely disconnected.

I was just reading one of my SEAL books and in it, one of the SEALs on a mission, killed his first enemy with a knife so as not to alert any others of his presence. A second SEAL did the same thing. At the end of the chapter, the first SEAL, who’d acted exactly without thinking, which probably saved not only his life, but the lives of all the others with him, suddenly realized that this was the first time he’d killed someone. And he did it automatically, precisely and stealthily, exactly as he’d been trained. The issue is he isn’t quite sure how he feels about that.

Were it not for my love of reading, I would not be pondering the complexities that surround having to kill someone. Though I’ve thought about killing someone, okay multiple people, on more than one occasion, I never really meant it. And killing someone, with my bare hands no less, isn’t something I ever expect to come up against. I mean I don’t even like someone standing too close to me, breathing in my own personal space, let along secreting yucky bodily fluids on me from a deadly knife wound.

So thanks to reading, I can wholeheartedly say, I completely support whatever means active-duty SEALs or the military in general use to protect themselves. After all, they’re out there protecting my freedom. I admire their abilities and their dedication. And while I have learned it’s in very poor taste to ask a SEAL how many people he’s killed, the fact the he has is still cool.