“No permita que el miedo a la
dificultad lo paralice.” That’s how
Paulo Freire’s second letter begins. And he goes on defining something
difficult as something that represents an obstacle. Then he introduces three
characters, the fear, the difficulty and the subject (a person). What does he
mean? The fear produced by the difficulty which is experienced by the person.
More specifically, the author refers to the fear caused by the difficulty of understanding
a book or text labeled as ‘not-easy’.
Freire says that our perception about difficulty will
depend on how confident we feel about ourselves. Being confident would help us
to think that we are able to overcome almost any situation we face. “A veces
la lectura de un texto exige alguna convivencia anterior con otro que nos
prepara para un paso posterior,” he says. I understand this as “our objectives need to be gradual because achieving
smaller goals will make us feel more confident. (Someone suggested, “Start
with books that appeal to you.”)
“It
is a big mistake to give up just as soon as we meet with the first obstacle.” That
is how I interpret Freire’s words. And there would be no problem if we give up
to one particular task, but the truth is that, certainly, most of the things we
do, if not all, require or demand some kind of effort from us. “Nobody said it
was easy” says a song. Therefore, before giving up to a text or any other
situation, it would be necessary to analize why it is worthy to go on trying,
or what are the reasons for going on with something. Then, by identifying our strengths
and abilities we would find that the big challenge is not as big as we thought
of it at first.
The ideas above are referred by the author, Paulo
Freire, around the task of understanding a text and the difficulty it might
represent. However, in my and Freire’s opinion, reading a text is a personal
experience in which the author and the reader meet; an experience in which the
author let us to know his or her opinion about a certain topic; an experience
in which the reader’s task is to figure out what the author is trying to convey
by words.
“Reading: Do
it yourself, Do it enjoyable”
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