My mind was ready to vomit from overstimulation.
The back of my eyes began to ache and my head started to spin as the world grew infinitely complex while I shrank infinitely small.
Books are delicious. More precisely, ideas are delicious. Elegant arguments, graceful prose, precise explanations. Ever since I started to read, I’ve had an insatiable hunger to eat as many of them as possible.
Like food, you should be hyper-conscious of what you put in your brain.
The Internet is a boundless buffet. It’s never been easier to pile our plates high with information. Even if you skip the junk, which is no easy feat, and choose only the healthiest, most nutritious, most balanced food, you can still eat too much.
Gregory Bateson: There is always an optimal value, beyond which anything is toxic, no matter what: oxygen, sleep, psychotherapy, philosophy.
Managing information consumption, I’ve found, is often trickier than food because it’s harder to tell when you’re full.
While on vacation at a beach-side resort, if I decide to take “all you can eat” as a literal challenge, at some point, my stomach will say “Dude, chill out. No more”.
But, after spending four hours tearing through Substack essays, getting tangled in Twitter threads, and adding 10 books to my ever-expanding “want to read” list, I can push away the overwhelm and push on.
I want to stop. But I also don’t. I stay at my desk. Read one more essay, refresh my feed one more time, download one more book, feeding my hunger for more.
Somehow I’ve told myself that it’s good for me. Somehow I think I’m learning.
We live in a world where reading has become a competitive sport for the intellectually curious. A tool for social comparison. We gape in awe at the champions of our sport who blaze through a book every week.
We open our mouths wide and shove as many ideas into our brains as possible.
Our compulsion to learn has twisted into a compulsion to consume.
In our frantic rush to acquire knowledge, we forget the point of reading isn’t consumption. It’s absorption. Digestion. Delight. For humanity’s best ideas to seep into our soul, intertwine with the fabric of our being, and integrate into our worldview.
Without digestion, reading is pointless.
Yet we live in an age where most people race through mediocre ideas rather than steep in the best ones.
Seneca: Give [up] hoping that you can skim the wisdom of distinguished men.
You don’t want to read everything at a surface level. You want to read a few great things to their very depths.
The true rewards of reading are reserved for only those who read deeply.
Marcus Aurelius: Read attentively—not to be satisfied with “just getting the gist of it.”
But, metabolizing great ideas takes time.
Great books demand deliberate study because great ideas demand an almost flow-state of attention. A control of consciousness. A firm commitment to sit with ideas until they unveil their deepest truths.
Where you do not consume the words, the words consume you.
Rather than optimizing for speed, simmer in slowness.
Last February, I read Awareness by Anthony de Mello for the third time. It’s only 184 pages, but it took me over a month. Every day at 11 o’clock, I’d sit in my reading chair with my second cup of coffee and crack open the cover. I’d read for an hour, making it through eight or nine pages.
Each page, I’d read. Then re-read. Sometimes twice. Slowly. Carefully. Intentionally. I’d underline key ideas, scribble notes in the margins, distill the core principles, and reflect on how I could actualize de Mello’s wisdom in my life.
And, when I needed to, when I was hit with a particularly profound idea, when I was left gaping in awe at the beauty of the thoughts before me, I’d look up, take a deep, meditative breath, and just let the words sink in.
In those moments, time thickens and intensifies and I become oblivious to the outside world, completely absorbed by the words on the page. They have been the most fulfilling, memorable, and life-changing reading experiences of my life.
Now, I read at half the speed at which I used to read.
Like a greedy toddler, I’m learning to pace myself and properly chew my food.
Read, slowly.
If you enjoyed this essay, you might also enjoy a scrapbook of my best writing from last year.
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Thanks for being here, and reading my essay slowly :)
I really enjoyed this read. Thanks for sharing!
Love how this turned out. Really like the lesson (even though it's so hard for me to apply).