When I was a child, I ate many foods, and now I can’t remember what I had eaten. But one thing is for sure, some of them have become part of my bones and flesh. The transformation that reading brings to a person is the same.

Books can generally be divided into two categories: skill-based and humanities-based. Skill-based books, as the name suggests, explain methods of doing things with the intention of imparting skills; whereas humanities-based books express certain viewpoints or attitudes through text, aiming to convey thoughts.

When we consider the significance of reading, what we contemplate is not the utility of skill-based books, as their purpose is clear, but the significance of humanities-based books.

For the latter category, their characteristics include: low readability, high forgettability, and weak practicality.

That is to say, after spending a lot of time and effort, you finish reading but find it of little practical use. Such reading experiences are the most likely to make people question their value and necessity.

In my view, reading has at least five significances.

1. Enriching Instead of Wasting

Loving to read is like turning the lonely moments of life into moments of great joy.

This is an era of entertainment to death, where our daily lives are filled with audio-visual stimuli, completely packed. When we go out, if we look down, we are on our phones; if we look up, screens are everywhere — in elevators, on high-rise buildings, on buses, brainwashing us with repeated sounds; at home, if the family sits together, chess or TV is the norm; if alone, it’s the world of phones and computers.

Games, videos, chess, the three major killers of leisure time secretly consume our already scarce daily hours, leaving behind guilt and regret for wasted time. Countless nights, reflecting on the day’s actions, feeling nothing but trivial.

However, humans need entertainment. Unlike machines, as living beings, we need it to relieve stress and fill up spare time. At this point, the way of entertainment becomes particularly important. When we choose a form of entertainment, we choose its ability to interestingly fill our dull time and relax our lives.

Reading is such a form of entertainment.

When we read a book, the only difference from ordinary forms of entertainment is that we feel enriched, and we don’t regard the time as wasted.

2. Focused Instead of Scattered

Whenever I’m about to start something, I read for twenty minutes first. Because I find it hard to concentrate, especially in this age of information explosion, always wanting to glance at WeChat or scroll through Weibo.

Reading serves as a process for me to adjust my state. Turning the phone to silent, screen down, and then my spirit gradually sinks into the lines of text, my sensitivity to the world keeps rising. I awake from a vague scatter to enter a sensitive and focused state.

With such a state at the beginning of a task or day, efficiency is doubled and the spirit is refreshed.

Perhaps reading is an important source of ritual sense in my life, solemnly starting each day and each task, focusing on its completion, and then concluding it whole.

3. Spiritual rather than material

Just as a person’s body requires nourishment, so does the spirit, and books are precisely the food for the soul.

When a person’s physical nutrition cannot keep up, they become weak and sickly. Similarly, when a person’s spiritual nutrition cannot keep up, they become ignorant and foolish, which is how a “giant infant” is born.

There are two methods to strengthen the spirit: experience and reading. Experience often grows with age, stemming from one’s own life, while reading is different. Its growth depends on how much time a person invests, and this enhancement is about absorbing the life experiences of others for oneself. Both require you to read extensively and to have rich experiences, but they share a commonality: elevating your spirit to a new height, allowing you to understand the world and people more deeply.

If we compare reading to the food we eat daily to satisfy our hunger, and experience to the daily exercise we do to strengthen our physique, then the significance of reading is akin to eating for physical survival. It prevents a person’s spirit from dissipating and provides a nutritional foundation for progress and improvement.

After all, what good is talking about physical strength if one cannot even satisfy their hunger? Or spiritual elevation if one cannot even achieve basic reading? Only by applying what we read to think about life, and using what we feel in life to give back to our reading, can our lives progress through continual integration and understanding.

4. For contemplation rather than indoctrination

Reading is not for the sake of argument and refutation, nor for credulity and blind obedience, but for thinking and understanding.

Unlike fragmented reading, reading a book is more systematic and depthful. If fragmented reading can quickly establish our basic understanding of the world, i.e., what is happening in the world, then book reading cultivates a systematic worldview and thinking ability in us. It encourages us to ponder why something happens. Is it a natural disaster or a man-made one? How can human nature be guided to prevent the same thing from happening again? How can we prevent collective errors?

One of the significances of books lies in touching emotions and stimulating thought.

Through reading, we understand others’ thoughts and stories and compare them with our own life experiences. Initially, it might just be a slight touch, feeling that I have encountered such emotions before or that I agree with such views. However, quantitative changes will gradually lead to qualitative changes. A certain amount of reading will elevate your way of thinking. Next, you will consider differences and similarities, followed by exploring causes and thinking about prevention, the role of individuals and society, and their impact on oneself.

This differs from traditional education. Such thinking is active rather than indoctrinated. We are not first told a definite conclusion and then try to solve problems through that conclusion. Instead, we discover, dissect, and answer questions step by step through our own understanding and thinking, arriving at a conclusion that may be argued by others or overturned by ourselves, eventually forming a comprehensive logical way of thinking. It enables you to quickly identify the core essence of problems and derive insights that are more aligned with yourself.

5. Rational rather than blind following

Rationality is based on existing theories, through reasonable logical deduction to achieve certain results; whereas blind following refers to the blind acceptance of experiences or rules.

The differences between them lie in:

• Whether it is based on scientifically valid theories.

• Whether it is based on logical reasoning that makes sense.

Our society never lacks people who follow blindly, those who echo others’ views, but from one public event and civic reaction to another, our society lacks rational people, those who analyze problems through logical thinking rather than through emotional intuition.

Through the analysis of the differences between rationality and blind following, we can discover that reading is the essential path to rationality. Only extensive and deep reading can establish a comprehensive scientific theoretical system, as nobody can construct the scientific conclusions developed over almost a thousand years of human advancement through personal thinking alone. We always stand on the shoulders of those before us to see the world; nor can anyone build effective, objective, and rigorous logical thinking based solely on experience, for thinking needs exercise, nutrition, and the diverse experiences and interpretative thinking that reading brings to us.