Libertad de — Freedom to
Escoger — Choose
El conocimiento — The knowledge
Restructurador — That reshapes us.
Translator’s note: The initials spell LEER, Spanish for “to read.”
When we read, we are free. We choose what to read, choose what to learn, enjoy it. It nourishes our senses, and all that knowledge and those realities imprinted on our minds continually reshape our thoughts and beliefs.
When we read, we create our own reality, our own colors, our own shapes, our own truth.
When others do the reading and “tell” us what they have read, the information reaches us through a filter: the speaker’s patterns, beliefs, and experiences. Yes, that filter takes us out of our ignorance, but it draws us into theirs. It is their reality, not ours; their colors, not ours; their shapes, not ours. When we allow them to influence our minds, we stop being free, stop deciding, stop thinking. We stop thinking critically and, therefore, stop questioning ourselves. We end up as an extension of them. We stop being ourselves and become someone else’s slave.
Reading gives us freedom of thought, freedom to decide, freedom of worship, freedom to learn, freedom to choose what to believe, freedom to grow at our own pace, rather than at the pace we let others impose because we are too lazy to read. Those who are less lazy and more astute will impose their ideas on our minds. Imprisoned by laziness, we will simply repeat things like parrots, with no foundation at all—or, worse, with a foundation built on other people’s ideas rather than our own.
You are free to decide what to do: read and choose what to believe, or wait for others to read and believe what they want you to believe.
“Read and you will lead; do not read and you will be led.”
Saint Teresa of Ávila