There's a bookshelf in my room that looks impressive from the doorway.
Spines cracked once, then never again.
Bookmarks stuck at page forty, marking the exact point I stopped reading.
For years I thought the goal was to finish them.
Get through the pages so you could quote the right line at dinner.
But finishing was never the test.
I could tell you every date, every name, every plot twist, and still walk away having learned nothing at all.
None of that ever changes you. The lesson does.
Perseverance.
The cost of pride.
How easily a person gets pulled off course.
You can finish every book on that shelf and still be the same person who picked it up.
Reading isn't the assignment.
Changing is.
