Brief reflection: The importance of reading

I start from the idea that the intellectual value of a man is directly related to the number of books he read; if he read only one intellectual book he is like a ten-year-old child; if he did not read any book he is like a four-year-old child; we may love those people for their moral gifts, and we may love them for the effective capacity they inspire or radiate, but when they speak to us they will illustrate us in a way similar to that a ten- or four-year-old child would illustrate when he tells us his troubles.

Borges said "Let others boast of the pages they have written; I am proud of those I have read"; I say that both things go together, because what one writes is strictly related to what one reads; something that Borges otherwise knew; reasons of aesthetics (perhaps mere subordination of style or metrics, or simply vanity) led him to say that he was not proud of what he wrote. Imagine how proud he would be of what he wrote that he never allowed anyone to make a prologue to any of the 42 books that make up his entire work. His pride in his work was so immense that he never allowed anyone to interfere, even by introducing a miserable comma. If I were Borges, like him, I would also feel infinite pride in such a work, the difference being that I would say it, instead of incurring in the false modesty of saying the opposite.

According to Herodotus Pericles, the greatest ruler of Greece; less famous historians over the centuries were saying that the best ruler of Rome was Marcus Aurelius, the best of England Churchill, the best of America Jefferson and the best of Argentina Sarmiento. It is no coincidence that those rulers, moreover, have been some of the most educated people of your time, that is, it is not capricious to say that they were the best rulers because they spent their lives reading. Conversely, the worst rulers of South America - who were also the worst rulers of the world in their time - were Chavez, Maduro, Lula, Kirchner, and CFK; it is no accident that they are and have all been semi-illiterate.

In a way it is licit to say that one is all that one was, something that will also determine all that one will be; what is interesting to read then, is that the books intelligently condense the best of the human experience, an experience that in life is scattered and chaotically disordered, where valuable experiences are separated by long hiatuses of existence where nothing worth remembering happens, and where no intellectual enrichment is reported. It is not reckless to say, then, that whoever reads Jose Ingenieros' The Mediocre Man in a week has much more life experience than whoever lives 50 years without reading anything.

Many times when I was reading in a bar I was told that I liked to escape from reality; to which I replied: Reading is an unrealistic act, reading is not living, what is it, being in a state of suspension between life and death like Mr. Valdemar in Poe's story, watching a football match or talking about the price of things is living more than reading, why is it that those who watch a football match, or who do business in a bank, are not told that they are escaping from reality? In terms of life experience, reading gives you a lot more life experience than living without reading. Whoever reads does not evade reality, on the contrary, he who lives without reading evades reality.

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