Put Down the Phone, Pick A Book

It is the standard morning routine that I eat my cereal while keeping tabs with the happenings of the world from my mobile phone. The husband will normally be upstairs, getting whatever things done or snuggling under the duvet until I finished preparing for breakfast. Khayra will not leave dreamland until we wake her up. Tough kid.

As I scroll the screen this morning, I realised I haven’t done much reading. Despite being given almost two months off as reading weeks, I have not been doing it. All I did was reading all sorts of things (mostly junks) online, without jotting them down. I can’t even remember bits of facts I claimed I have read.

It got me thinking that I have been part of them. Those who claim they read, but the truth is they have been reading from the Internet. It was disconcerting and I quickly put down my phone as I stared at a pan full of nuggets happily frying on the stove.

Why are we not reading anymore?

10 years back, or more, I’d be eating breakfast while flipping through a story book because I just couldn’t tolerate silence. But now I notice that I can only get through a mere 5 pages of a book but an impressive 30 page refreshes of Facebook. Worrying, indeed.

I started to find solutions to this, and Facebook detox came to mind. I initially thought it will do me good, but then Facebook or any other social networks should not be made a primary excuse for any of one’s impulsive behaviours even though they do play a certain role. It has to come from myself, and since I have been communicating with my fellow colleagues on the platform, I’ll just let it be. Let it breathe while I do the same.

Then I stared at Khayra and started to worry if she grew up uninterested in books. So I made up my mind to work on a small challenge – A MINI BOOK CLUB at home of which we will sit together at certain time of the day and read. This will be a time when the three of us will be reading without any disruptions from the outside world. This means shutting out any kind of devices, be it phones, iPads, televisions or even Khayra’s mini Peppa Pig laptop which sometimes play on its own.

The idea is to get our attention to squarely focused on the page, while developing a bond with reading habit.

I hope this works and I am determined enough to make it happen on a daily basis.