From Cave Walls to Crosswords: Reading is the key

I've always found it fascinating that we have evidence of cave people drawing out stories on their cave walls. That cave people needed entertainment too, and they created their own by documenting a story of a dangerous kill, or drawings of themselves. This fascinates me because we basically do the same thing today. Our stories are more elaborately conceived, and we can blanket the world with news in a matter of minutes, but the concept remains the same: we need information, we want to documentation of our lives, and we need entertainment.

Reading is one of the first joys of my life and it has been an enriching addition since I was very young. However reading has taken a backseat for many years to TV, the Internet, and gabbing with friends or worrying about work. I think for many people in America, we take reading for granted. Every year we have more and more information at our fingertips, more books have been written, more websites built. The amount of reading material we have is endless, and would be of great envy to those cave people.

Besides our privilege of having loads of material available for our eyes, there is a health benefit to reading with abandon. As we age, the threat of Alzheimer's seizing our brains become more real. A study performed by David Snowdon shows that the wider a person's vocabulary, and complexity of thought while in their twenties, the less at risk they were for developing the devastating disease later in life (Suite101.com, Melissa Howard). The brain is a muscle just like the triceps, abs and hamstrings, and reading is like exercise for the brain. When we're 65 and our minds are retiring, we want them as sharp as we can preserve them. My father does crossword puzzles every day to give his mind a little workout. My grandmother is rarely seen without a book by her side. Both of these role models of mine have some of the most admirable brains I've ever encountered, and I want to strive to create that type of mind for myself as I age.

So try creating a reading ritual for yourself, whether its sitting down with the paper in the morning instead of watching the news, or reading from a good book for a half an hour during your lunch break, or even simply completing a Sudoku puzzle every day, exercise your brain, and your right to knowledge. Another bonus my father has demonstrated (besides having a sharp, informed mind late into life): knowing enough trivia to put Alex Trebec to shame!