how i got into reading

when i was young, i was addicted to books. my parents read to me every night, and at some point i stopped needing them to - i just kept going on my own. i don't know exactly when that stopped, but it did. somewhere between growing up and wanting to be outside, the books disappeared.

for most of my teenage years i didn't miss them. i was more interested in going out, traveling, being somewhere rather than sitting still. reading felt like the opposite of living.

the first crack appeared during my a-levels. we had to read Woyzeck - Büchner, a short, strange play.
i actually read it, which wasn't always the case with assigned books. and then we discussed it in class, and something surprised me: we had all read the same words, but nobody had the same associations. the same sentences meant different things to different people. i thought, how is that possible? and then i thought, i should have started this earlier.

i didn't fully start then either, but the door had opened.

the real shift happened in the military (between a-levels and military were not even two months). my best friend linus, whom i got to meet during a training on how we jump out of planes, read constantly, and it wasn't the books themselves that got to me at first, it was his passion. the way he talked about ideas, the connections he made, the depth he carried around with him. it was rare. when you're around someone that genuinely passionate about something, it pulls you in. their energy doesn't just inspire you, it makes you want to do more.

one afternoon in the field, warm spring, both of us somewhere in the middle of nowhere, he said something that stayed with me: "you're experiencing the world through someone else's eyes when you read."

that was it for me.

thank you linus for the perspectives you have opened up. because reading isn't something reserved for people who have nothing better to do. it's for people who want to go beyond the surface, who want to combine what they think they know with what someone else lived.

the words we read are the same. our associations never are.

i wish i had started earlier. but at least i started.