Among the many rituals I subject myself to in the name of mental levitation, reading speed and comprehension stands out as an amigo and adversary. I consider myself a slow reader (240 words per minute for full comprehension), which according to the internet puts me at a reading speed of a very distracted 12-year old with an early onset of cataract.

I have also noticed that my mind loves to go only fast enough to make sure each sentence is fully recognized and appreciated for what it is doing. It’s almost like each sentence sashays down a ramp, turns here, and there, swirls around, looks at me in an enticing manner, and sashays back—all in an effort to impress me. If I even glance at the next sentence without the previous one having made “total” sense, I feel like I have betrayed some unwritten moral obligation and then dissolve into a state of mini-panic.

Years of mastering this flawed technique turned me into a tortoise with a PhD in sentence worship. Such slowness satisfies my desire for increased clarity and illumination of each sentence. But this gives way to a cyclic causality where slow reading gives a glimmer of increased comprehension, which in turn makes me want to read even slower for an even greater understanding. The myth I believe is that the slower I read, the better I will understand.

On the contrary, my guess is that my mind is like a fat lazy cat stretching and luxuriating in the sun. It does not want to be pushed to do the work at hand—read and process faster. This laziness allows my mind to s-l-o-w-l-y ease into each sentence, when it could have been pushed to do the work of reading fast, editing concept formations and imagination, and encoding it.

Thus ensues the classic internal tug of war documented in the Bible. What I want to do I do not, and what I do not, that I do. I want to read faster but I fear I wouldn’t understand. And so I read slowly at a pace where I reach Pg 3 of War and Peace in 2029.

Whether this is a middle age crisis or spiritual sabotage, I intend to find out. I am in this for the long haul. So stay tuned!

I am unable to focus when I want to. I can barely remember my kids ages. Survival instincts, though, have forced me to remember my parent’s wedding anniversary and my debit card PIN.

This is the case. I start reading books with great interest, only to forget the first page by the second. My recall function sputters and misfires. And soon I drift away thinking of lunch, an argument with a colleague, my dead-for-thirty-years dog Bruce’s drool, and—wait, what book is this?

This kind of premature senility began soon after I was born. A love of comfort and entertainment made me frustratingly lazy to attempt any mental gymnastics more complex than 2+2=3 (which I still dispute). This cognitive decline isn’t genetics—it’s inertia laced with daydreams.

And so here I am. With a rising desire to master my mind, I am going to apply myself to learn to read faster, remember better, improve focus, and increase my state of awareness and other cognitive abilities. I blush when I think of my apotheosis—the venerable Johnny English himself.

Do I have it in me? Maybe Sister Bernita, my elementary school teacher, was right. I am, perhaps, called to the noble task of herding cattle or cleaning the hen coop. Nothing less. But for sure nothing more.

Anyways, I would like to document this journey as frequently as I can. I want to give my mind a fighting chance. As Michael Jackson… or Mickey Mouse… or maybe my uncle Georgekutty might have uttered, “Better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all!”