You've lost the ability to read deeply

This loss is real and, gently, reversible. The mind was retrained by the way you feed it — years of fragments, skims, and quick switches taught it to flit and let the habit of sustained descent fall away; this is not a failing of intelligence but a shaping of attention, and a mind shaped one way can be shaped another. So begin again with small, patient descents — a few pages fully attended, the phone in another room, the mind gently returned each time it strains, lengthening slowly, recovered not by straining but by repeated gentle return. And know that deep attention is a door the fragments cannot open — onto the slow unfolding of an idea, the pleasure of losing yourself in one long thing, a country the shallow stream cannot enter. That is why the patient rebuilding is worth it. What did deep reading once give you that you miss?