On Grapes and Reading, a Passage -- by Alex Ranieri

The vintner does not coddle his vines. In order to put down deep roots, which will allow them to survive decades, the young sprouts must suffer occasionally the drought, occasionally the rough wind and tempest. Who will disagree that such suffering may likewise strengthen the roots of the intellect?

We were forced, against our childish inclinations, to learn how to read. Which of us cannot call up painful memories of struggles, nigh on Herculean, to chain up in these iron contortions our thoughts and our speech? And yet, later in life, what relief cannot these same chains give? In our painful hours they distract us, in our despair they commiserate, in our loneliness offer companions, and our intellectual pangs of hunger they satisfy with knowledge. So life rewards the young sprouting vine, who has struggled through rocky soil to put down its roots, with sweet water and abundant food.

The vine, however, does not struggle once and achieve bliss. Why should we suppose that after our initial struggle to read, and to scrape from a handful of years at school some little nourishment, we can achieve intellectual contentment? Even the seventy year-old grand dame of vines must suffer the humiliation of being tossed about by tempests, and endure long days on the rack of drought. We, too, no matter our age, must be ready to struggle, again and again—to clash, again and again, and each time more painfully, with our ignorance.