How has reading shaped your life?

How did the reading you did as a child affect you later on in life?

My readings from my childhood were very important in shaping the man I would become through high school and years to follow. My mother and grandmother used to read to me when I was little. They read me mostly bible stories like david and goliath, noah's ark, etc. they also read the little engine that could. My mind has often resembled stardust and mostly because of always living outside the realm of “possibility”. To me this world is more than just ones and zeros, profit or loss. I still try read everyday I believe there can be power in words whether they are spoken or typed. This often comes back to what I was read as a child. Children are like sponges I don’t think we truly understand the implications the first few readings can have on a child. I am very thankful for my family and what they chose to read to me. The times I drifted from what I was taught and learned from reading as a kid I fell into the false ideology that money is more valuable than people and to me this is not true.

I am a pursuant of justice and equality. This is the reason I wake up and go to school, I am more concerned with eradicating poverty and world hunger than making profit. Profit is what makes the world spin, and yes even true sustainability cannot be achieved without profit being incorporated. But today's world is far from sustainable, we have the profit, now we need to decentralize where the profit is going. Today I build upon the readings I did as a child and apply them to more in depth readings like “The Brundtland Report”, “Full Planet Empty Plates”, “Green Metropolis”, and more scholarly articles than stories, though in my free time, I would still probably prefer my stories from my childhood when it comes to reading for fun. Right now I am in some pretty tough classes reading wise and have kind of been thrown into some very deep and intellectual texts by Dr. Witter and without the foundation of reading I had as a child I would not be able to make it through.