Read it again

The process of relearning enriches each day of our life.

Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks

Angus Fletcher

We talk much about learning, not so much about relearning. Yet Angus Fletcher is right: It is something that enriches each day of our lives. We relearn whenever we watch a movie we have seen before, visit an old friend, hear a favorite song or open a box in our attic after we have forgotten what it contains.

We forget so much of what we experience, Relearning is the act of bringing it back.

As Fletcher's book, Wonderworks, is about literature, he is particularly interested in what happens when we read books we have read previously. He writes, "As you start to turn the pages, you'll feel your brain entwining old details it remembers with new ones it never grasped before, mingling nostalgia with epiphany and making the novel feel novel once more."

Rereading a novel provides two benefits — becoming reacquainted with characters and a plot we had previously enjoyed and discovering new insights we totally missed the first time through — "mingling nostalgia with epiphany," as Fletcher puts it.

"So, by forgetting and then relearning, we create an opportunity for a special kind of discovery that brings wisdom from the past but also fresh eyes from the present," he says.

Thus, forgetting much or even most of what we've read can actually be a good thing, as strange as that sounds. Relearning leads to deeper learning.

The catch, of course, is that we actually have to read the book a second time.