Hats

How many hats can we juggle at the same time? It's a question that intrigues many of us.

One at a time.

That's what I've been learning from Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. On this point, I concede that I'd been multitasking a lot. I guess it's fine as long as I switch my hats one by one. Or chapter by chapter. And it's true that I like to embark on several books before finishing each one.

In the middle of Six Thinking Hats, I picked up another book UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World. That's a parenting book with sage advice on raising empathetic kids. One of the crucial steps is to develop reading habits. It doesn't matter if it's a picture book or text-heavier chapter book. Stories or literary fiction is all that matters. The more literary fiction we read, the more we feel with the characters, the more we mirror their actions, and the more we stretch our "empathy muscles." Once I finished the chapter on Reading to Cultivate Empathy, I could practically hear my synapses fritzing and sparking. Hmm, did anyone of you long to start a fiction? I know mine did.

That's why I'm now reading Elizabeth Strout's Anything Is Possible, before finishing Six Thinking Hats and UnSelfie.