Creative Reading

Ralph Waldo Emerson tells us "there is then creative reading as well as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes luminous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly significant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world."

Authors, the ones we love, touch us by saying that which we can not articulate ourselves. While reading - if we are truly, actively reading - we see connections to the world around us, to our own lives, to our own thoughts, and this makes the story itself even more powerful, full of truths momentarily captured.

I often wish I could express this feeling to my students, the feeling of connection one feels with the text and with the author in those moments of realization. As always, I should have turned to Emerson, the man with the quote for all times. I used another Emerson, "the invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common," as my senior quote. And to this day it is the bit of wisdom I draw on the most.