For the next two posts, I intend on discussing the idea and importance of reading.  First as it pertains to me personally, and second as to its wider implications.

 A couple of years ago during school I was reading a book in a free period.  When I have the time, it helps break the monotony of classes.  But my friend had been making fun of me for it. 

 “So,” I said , “what’s wrong with that?”

 I was rather defensive since it was a book by Frank Herbert, a favorite author of mine.

 “It’s boring! Besides,” he said sardonically, “you’re not doing anything! You just sit there and look at a bunch of words.  Where’s the fun in that!?”

 And that’s what it comes down to for so many people isn’t it: where’s the fun at? I remember sitting there, momentarily stunned, and wondering if that was the beginning of  my complete social demise. 

 “But no?” I thought, “It’s not like I’m the only one who reads!”

 I was surprised at how close to the truth that errant thought actually was.  I can remember surreptitiously asking friends whether they had read anything good lately – just to test the waters.  I couldn’t believe how many said they hadn’t read a book on their own in years.  Sure, they read To Kill A Mockingbird because we had to. They gritted their teeth through Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but that was the extent of it.  So that made me think: why do I like to read?

 So I’ll put out there the few things that I felt were the most important to me when it came to reading.  First, finding what kinds of books I like to read.  Sounds easy, right? Well for a lot of kids you find that they just don’t know what they like.  They’ve never explored the different genres to get a feel for what interests them.  Once you hit on something you enjoy, you go back for more!  Think of the thousands of young kids that are now fantasy nuts because of the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.  When you have a new series or novel sitting in front of you by your favorite author, it’s exciting! It’s the only virus that doesn’t make you sick!

 Second, the example set by my parents.  My fondest memories are of my mom and I going to the library on a Saturday, getting a big bag of books, and going home to flop on the bed and read.  It was something she genuinely enjoyed and she wanted to instill that enjoyment in me.  Her with a 1000 page historical fiction on Cleopatra, and me with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are.  It made reading more fun!  If there was a word I didn’t know, I was told I always should ask.  If there was a picture I liked, I would share it with her.  Sometimes she would tell me about what was going on in her book to change things up.  It became an activity that was engaging to all the facets of my curious 5 year old mind. 

 And that’s the most important part.  Reading does not mean sitting in a dark room with a light by yourself.  Reading means engaging yourself in a story that takes you away from your normal life and transports you into the world created by the author.  You can be Hester Prynne in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, walking down 17^th century Jamestown with a scarlet “A” on your chest. You can be Harry Potter soaring around the Quidditch field trying to find the golden snitch.  You can be Ender from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game walking down the halls of Battle School.  You can be anything!

 So — ask your kid what he wants to be when he grows up, if he says fireman then give him a big ole’ book about fireman! What’s the worst that could happen? A lecture from your 5 year old about the need for fire extinguishers!? 

Last week I sat in on a panel discussion around the viewing of the documentary film, Consuming Kids. The movie talks of the total brand saturation that is happening to our kids these days and the relentless methods of the marketing machine.

As a parent it frightened me to see the tactics taken by the marketers. And it’s not just about commercials either. It’s about total immersion in a brand culture where the goal is “cradle to grave brand loyalty”.

If you’re a parent or an educator or someone even remotely connected to kids in any way, you should see this film. And we should all do our part to talk to our kids about it and educate them on the methods being used so that they have some defense against it all. We can teach our kids to be makers and crafters and sewers and painters and artists of all kinds. And we can help them to trust their own creativity. We can give them outlets where they can be away from the marketing machine and in a space where they can listen to their own souls. We can take time to turn off all the screens: tv, computer, phone - and we can take the time to fully connect with them and let them know that what they are, who they are, is enough, without the need for a certain brand or product or label tattooed across their chest.

There are a lot of things that determine our lives and sometimes it seems that there is so little we can do to change it. Politics, world economy and international relations seem to be living in a separate world from us, ordinary people. It’s no wonder that people become more and more detached from what is going on around them. But is there really nothing we can do about it?

For two years now a group of Estonians have expressed great initiative and eagerness to contradict that kind of uncertainty. In May 2008 around 50 000 people came to the fore to clean the forests, parks and roadsides from garbage. In just five hours of work around 10 000 tons of trash was collected which could be said was the best birthday present for our country (Estonia turned 90 last year). The slogan of the project was simple: “Let’s do it!”

This May the initiative continued but under a new slogan and concept. It was called “My Estonia”. People came together as well, but this time not to do something but to put their heads together and think of ways to make the world a better place. There were agencies of that initiative set up in every county, village and town - close enough to everyone living in this country. They discussed the issues that were bothering them and tried to come up with suggestions on what should be done. No bluf, but concrete ideas.

This week one of the leading newspapers in Estonia publised some of those ideas, just to give us a peek on what was discussed. I was more than surprised that among proposals on how to make traffic safer and improve our education system, which are absolutely important topics as well, the slow movement has also crawled into the heads of so many people around me. Here are some examples:

How to make the most of the economic crisis?

• become friends with nature - go hiking, biking etc.
• talk to your children about how the world works
• do some gardening and help your neighbour in it as well
• pick your own berries and mushrooms from the woods
• bring back romance, take a midnight walk under the starry sky
• improve your cooking skills

A couple of months ago I was privileged enough to spend a whole week at my brother’s farm in a far-away place in the Sourthern part of Estonia - among forests and rivers, endless snow and freezing wind. I was accompanied by a four-year-old, a dog, a cat, five Scottish highlanders and two parrots - one light green and one turqoise blue. What a colourful company it was.

When I first heard of the offer I imagined myself switching off completely and doing lots of nothing for the whole seven days. I even thought I would have time to meditate. How silly of me! Did I mention that my main conversational partner was a soon-to-be 4-year-old, a witty and self-willed niece to whom I was appointed as an assistant in household assignments during her parents’ get-away-trip. My holiday turned out to be a whole different story from what I had planned.

But as the old folks used to say: “Life’s what happens while you’re making plans”. That’s why waking up at 6.30 am, making breakfast at 7, going to kindergarten at 8 and reading bedtime stories before sleep didn’t break me. Vice Versa, I got to experience a bunch of new and unfamiliar emotions (since I don’t have children myself).

One of the grandest discoveries was that I really enjoy living side by side with nature. I do have to admit that I’m strongly attached to the human society and although I was cut from the world wide web, a local radio station still filled my need for background noise. Even though I didn’t feel the pressure to cut myself completely off there was still a whole world full of silence surrounding me. It is an experience itself waking up when the sun rises and going to bed once it has set.

This week gave me a lot to think about. I realised that I am at a point in my life where I’m drawing a line between the necessary and the unnecessary, the real and the not-so-real. I understand that the society created by people is irreplaceable. It is a natural progress in the journey towards raising our living standards. But for some sad reason we, people, tend to exaggerate with many things - possibilities, necessities and resources. The present economic crisis is even too primitive as an example about over-demanding and over-offering, but it is also an obvious one.  It seems like the whole society is looking for new alternatives and is re-evaluating its actual needs. Thus is drawing the same kind of line as I am.

In order to know where to draw that line it is extremely useful to spend a week among nature, animals and a child. For them that line is undoubtedly distinct. It is us, the grown-up children, who tend to mess up the heads of the little ones. But until they reach the age when they become fluent in self-destruction and self-deception, they are as untouched and wise as nature and animals. If only their parents didn’t fill their little drawers with the dirty socks of the grown-up society without even noticing it.

How much do we really need the noise and flood of information? For whom do we really wake up and make breakfast for each morning? Where is the line drawn between comfort turning into an addiction and necessity turning into a burden?

Ask nature, animals and little children.

At Slow Family Living, in our classes, we are asked often about ways to slow bedtime down to a peaceful pace. It can be such a frantic time of parents trying to finish up their duties before being granted a moment to themselves, and children grasping to hold on for just a few more minutes before the nightly separation. We talk often of trying to see bedtime as the last emotional fill-up of the day rather than the last parenting task before a couple hours of autonomy or quiet or other work even. Fill your own cup just before so you can settle into the task which then allows you to fill your child’s cup a bit too before they depart into sleep for the evening.

My friend Liz Scanlon, an amazing poet and writer of her own accord, sent me this incredibly eloquent quote in which the writer talks about bedtime as the last communion. I’ll say no more as the writer, Daniel Pennac, says it all and says it best…

“…{T}he ritual of reading every evening at the end of the bed when they were little—set time, set gestures—was like a prayer. A sudden truce after the battle of the day, a reunion lifted out of the ordinary. We savored the brief moment of silence before the storytelling began, then our voice, sounding like itself again, the liturgy of chapters. . . . Yes, reading a story every evening fulfilled the most beautiful, least selfish, and least speculative function of prayer: that of having our sins forgiven. We didn’t confess, we weren’t looking for a piece of eternity, but it was a moment of communion between us, of textual absolution, a return to the only paradise that matters: intimacy. Without realizing it, we were discovering one of the crucial functions of storytelling and, more broadly speaking, of art in general, which is to offer a respite from human struggle.” – Daniel Pennac, The Rights of the Reader