Dirty little secret

I have a confession to make...

I love to read. Doesn't really sound like a dirty secret but sometimes I feel like it is. And I am writing this to explain why.

The other day I went to a meeting and before things got started for real, people were talking. They were talking about a room at our school that is full of items that people have abandoned upon leaving Japan. It is full of junk and odds and ends--the detritus from moving--you can guess what it looks like. But it is also full of cast off books. Before Amazon, before the beneficent god of KINDLE with its wireless blessings, English books were like gold bars here. They are also heavy and expensive to ship, so although books are like friends and we hate to leave them when we move, sometimes there is no choice. So, there is a room in my building that looks a bit like a used book store without the nerdy-looking shop assistant and it is full of books. They are paperbacks and hardbacks and range from science fiction, to Tolstoy to self-help. That is what my esteemed colleagues were talking about. Someone had recently been down in the cast-off room and had seen that a whole set of Star Trek titles had been added to the collection. They were making a guess as to who had read them all and in a way--mocking the idea that someone had actually read all of them. Someone even said "I never read fiction."

I felt all sorts of emotions after hearing that. I felt angry, I felt incredulous and I felt guilty. I felt shamed because I LOVE fiction. And I felt conflicted because this was not the first time I have felt like I am doing something wrong by reading the things I love instead of focusing all my time reading about my profession.

I know I need to maintain a balance. I know I need to read "academic" works so I can publish and help my career "move forward" and so I can continue to grow as a teacher. I know that. And I admit to not being as rigorous a reader in that department as I should be. But I hate feeling guilty about reading for pleasure. I also would offer a counter argument that some people whom I know firsthand could use do do a LOT more reading of fiction to hone their humanity, relationship and emotional IQs. Fiction allows us a peek into the human condition. It is not quantitative--but rather qualitative and can give us insight into others' lives even if those people are not real. A good book can offer comfort, and help us to realize another perspective. It can broaden our point of view. This is just as important as polishing the "job" side of our lives--perhaps even more valuable because the people we work with are flesh and blood with problems, stresses and baggage of their own. The data shown in a graph is not going to help me comfort a student when she has had a fight with her boyfriend or when a co-worker is struggling with a messy divorce.

So the next time someone disses fiction. I may have to come out of the closet and give them a piece of my mind.