Booking Through Thursday – What’s the Point?

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It’s Thursday and time for Booking through Thursday.  Today’s Question is as follows:

I am paraphrasing from a friend’s Facebook wall her question:

“How would a teen-age boy who is going to work with his hands ever use Literature of England in his work?”

The age-old “How am I going to use this in real life?” question. How would you answer it?

My first and foremost answer to this question is it makes you think.  It challenges your mind and forces you to look at things in new and different perspectives.  Why would this be useful to a person who only works in manual labor?  Because if you ask any one who works a blue collar job, there is much more to a job than just using your hands.  Even a simple carpenter can be expected to do critical thinking, what if a project goes wrong, how do they fix it?  Reading provides you with that unique ability to see things through other eyes and thus enhances the nature of your critical thinking and your ability to think “outside of the box” or so I believe.   Reading also works your imagination and gets the creative centers of your mind flowing.  To cope with the problems the real world throws our way we have to be creative and be able to think things through in many different ways.

Why else would you read?  It allows you to learn about other people, other cultures, other worlds in a way that television and the internet can not.  This is important for personal development.  It allows you to escape into your imagination and other people’s imaginations and see the world through many eyes.

Reading is important on so many levels that I’m just scratching the tip of the iceberg here.  Reading isn’t supposed to make life more boring or more deplorable, but to enhance your experience of life.  It provides a unique way of viewing the world and it makes you think in ways you may never have thought before.  Reading isn’t just about education, it should be fun and spiritual and enlightening.