How to Cultivate a Reading Habit (HHWT Interview)

From Have Halal, Will Travel: As part of Hello Ramadan's 1% Better Every Day challenge, let's join owner of Wardah Books, Ibrahim Tahir as he shares steps to cultivate a reading habit and discusses why reading is important for us to be a better person.

An excerpt: We should not think of reading as a hobby or something you do during your spare time – no one has spare time – but as a habit that has to be cultivated daily. The benefits of reading for the individual are enormous. It is a gymnasium of the mind, and the mind needs daily exercise.

Additionally, reading habituates us to truth and beauty. Truth is something we all seek as human beings and reading helps us in this seeking. And on the other side of the coin is beauty. When we witness the beauty of language with the elegant idea of meditation, we habituate ourselves to a beauty that is beyond visual and beyond the physical. This is of immense importance for humanity in this day when truth has been cynically sidelined and beauty has been regarded as something only skin deep.

So imagine what society will be like if it was composed of readers who are habituated to truth and beauty? We can’t all set the world to right, we can’t solve all the problems – climate change, the pandemic, inequality – all of these make us cynical, resigned, and we feel powerless. However, we can recover some of this agency by reading and putting one foot forward, one by one, moving towards this truth and beauty.

Reading makes us more than 1% better every day.