Lesson: Let’s chat about philosopher David Hume’s insight into the relationship between emotion and rationality, and apply it to our reading habits. Hume famously asserted that reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions. In the context of building a reading habit, this means that our emotional engagement with reading is farContinue reading Day 10 – Hume’s Passion over Reason (Make it Emotional)
I am reading The Covenant of Water and thoroughly enjoying it. It is beautifully written allowing the reader to stop and savor the language; sometimes reading a passage more than once. The reader is emotionally connected to all the characters and their experiences resonate due to our shared humanity.
My favorite book is Tough Women. In fact, it is the only book I’ve been reading. I forgot to read the other books when I get caught in The Dip or not feeling pleasure. This has only happened a few times. I enjoy this book because I’m in awe of these women adventurers, their stories are truly interesting and remarkable, it is fun and meaningful reading because it puts me in their shoes and at times I feel like I’m experiencing their journey as well. It evokes a plethora of emotions in me- excitement, fear, endurance, meaning, strength, joy, indecisiveness, wonder, awe, beauty, and I too enjoy the outdoors. I’m not sure how to make my reading sessions more pleasurable? Perhaps I’ll discover more ways as I go along. Maybe if I visualized in my mind more often my goals and why I’ve chosen to be a focused reader could bring more pleasure.
This emotional connection influences my desire to read this book because at times I feel like I’m with them sharing their experience and perhaps someday I will embark on an outdoor trek of some kind. I hope.
Coffee really helps! One thing that helps when I’m not super motivated is reading shorter books. I am currently switching between a long “project” book and a shorter book to help move things along.
Finding pleasure in reading does drive my commitment to continue this course. It was a rational decision to take the course. Thankfully, I chose books l knew (rational) I wanted (emotional) to read to learn more about the subjects as a way of helping me in my personal life. My books address: hope, relationships, self-awareness, and death. All three books are loaded with emotional content. I connected emotionally to the book about hope, what it is, and what it does. Without an emotional attachment I would not have finished the book because of the difficulty I had with the author’s writing style. I would have made a rational decision to not waste my time.
The book about relationships and self awareness really pulls at my desire to feel good about myself and others I look forward to reading it every day. I haven’t started the book about death and dying by the hospice nurse yet. Emotionally, it scares me to think about dying but rationally I know I need to face this developmental part of being human.
To make my reading more enjoyable,I have been using a pink highlighter and then using navy blue ink to make notes in the margins. Fun colors that I thoroughly enjoy using.