With my last post I left you with two thoughts to ponder:
Readers are leaders. And in addition to that, leaders are readers! Read those truths again - readers are leaders and leaders are readers.
and
When you look at a simple acorn, what do you see?
If you did not yet find the time to ponder, take a moment or so to do so just now. Each of these have an impact on your present and your future.
Speaking of the concept of the “future,” homes for seniors are filled with people who have arrived at their future and found there was nothing there. Perhaps they had just drifted through life with no particular direction, going about a mindless, well practiced routine. Or, their goal was to be successful in a career path, which they accomplished, and then they reached retirement age and they realized they had no goal for beyond retirement.
They sit staring into space by the hour. Long before taking up residence in a home for seniors, scores of people retire in front on a TV set, staring at it hours and hours each day. I know a couple who turn the TV on at 8:30 a.m. and turn it off at 11 p.m. Fourteen and a half hours a day of programs featuring cooking, house hunting/renovations, “Judge ??” airing legal battles and often “dirty laundry” squabbles and divorces, the afternoon and evening news of horrors around the world, soap operas, and the programs strangely called “reality TV” which rarely have anything to do with reality! If there is nothing on to watch, they switch to the “weather network.” Which future are you planning for? If you have failed to plan, trust me, you will end up arriving at one of those futures and finding nothing there.
Readers are leaders and leaders are readers – a profound truth indeed. When you read quality materials new neuropathways develop, connections are made, the unclear can become clear. You move beyond what you did know to new ideas and expanded horizons. If you read ten biographies you can learn from the experiences of ten lifetimes! Read ten books on expertise in sales and you benefit from the experiences of ten authors and successful sales people. You really do not have to make all the mistakes on your own and take a lifetime to finally get things right. When a person is well read they can impart to others what they have learned through their reading, thus becoming leaders. Will you agree with absolutely everything you read? Probably not, but you will glean much – even if only what not to agree with. Often material from a secular viewpoint is riddled with Biblical concepts – the author just didn’t realize that the principles they have followed are principles set down long ago in the Scriptures. Reading with a Biblical world view allows you to see beyond what is on the page to how God would have you use what you have been reading. As Christians we need to become leaders – leading others to Christ.
Reading helps you to clarify your thoughts and beliefs. Beyond that, reading expands what you have to think about. The more you learn, the more you will want to read and to exercise your brain. Remember those folks in the senior’s homes or parked in front of the TV, many of them have brains that atrophied years ago through neglect. They may have been leaders but at some point they stopped reading, stopped developing new neuropathways, stopped growing.
Speaking of growing, an acorn is a seed. If you pondered and came up with that fact, you are on the right track. Besides seeing a seed or perhaps a squirrel’s quick meal, did you see a sapling, and perhaps a mighty oak tree? Wonderful! But beyond those truths there is more to see and we will explore the matter in a future article.