Most people take their own literacy for granted. The ability to read and write is by all means a privilege; you have the freedom to understand the world around you and freely communicate authentically to your personality freely.
Most people simply see themselves as fully literate now and tomorrow and for the rest of their adult lives. However, this can’t be further from the truth. Literacy is a skill that needs consistent sharpening and if you don’t sharpen your skills, you risk becoming someone who can no longer understand the world around you.
In the age of the internet, we are seeing a sudden and drastic rise of effective illiteracy. People can read and write but they barely know what they are reading and what they are writing, rather it is pattern recognition and surface-level understanding. Literacy is not a skill that is sharpened on a soft stone, rather, it needs to be sharpened on hard rock lest it grows dull and fragile.
Think about the last time in the past year you sat down and read an article, book, or journal that genuinely challenged you and forced you into the deep end of your reading levels. Think about the last time in a year you tried to write something that was incredibly dense and full of nuance. For most people they can’t name the last time they did either of these in five years, for some it might be decades.
Just like lifting requires you to move up in weight in order to build growth, so to does literacy requires you to challenge yourself to push your limits and try to understand denser and denser material.
There is a reason most political rights advocates advocate for their supporters to be literate and educated. The ability to read and write effectively is a tool that one can use to understand the world around them and is also useful in identifying the dangers that might be arsing. Literacy is like a light in the dark, if you do not feed the flame you risk it flickering out.
So go out and read, go to your nearest bookstore or find a book on Amazon that genuinely interests you and read it in one or two weeks. Through yourself at it, do this again and again. Train your mind and give yourself the sharpest tools to understand the world around you.
