From Gordon Rink to the Young Men’s Club, Colin O’Leary ’27 is helping to foster spaces where his peers feel supported and heard.
February 3, 2026
In a world of constant distraction, one student reflects on how reading, presence and spontaneity can help us rediscover attention — and the quiet moments where joy lives.
BY KRISTIN DUISBERG
I want to start with something simple: reading.
Not reading because there’s an essay, a quiz or an annotation requirement attached. Just reading a book, choosing to sit with words on a page and letting yourself stay there. There are no notifications, no tabs open and no background noise tugging at your attention every few seconds. It’s just you, a page and time moving a little slower than usual.
For me this term, that has looked like reading “Jurassic Park” whenever I could: On the alpine bus wedged between my boot bag and the window, or during a few odd minutes before a Seated Meal. Reading like this is not efficient, but it is grounding. Even in a loud bus or hallway, I can disappear into a story for a few minutes and return more present.
Dodging responsibilities to read may sound boring or unrealistic. But for me, reading has become one of the few times when I still practice real attention. And for a long time, I didn’t realize how rare, or valuable that was, until I started losing it everywhere else.
When I was in third grade, my parents were worried about me and how I was spending my time. I played sports in the afternoon after school, then would return home, head to the couch in our living room and pick up my latest book. I spent hours reading. It didn’t matter where I was, I was always reading, and my parents were concerned. They were concerned that all the time I was reading was taking away from social interaction and would leave me lost in a world where everyone else knew how to communicate with each other.
Looking back, it’s almost funny: My parents fretted that reading would pull me out of the real world. At the time, though, that concern made sense. It was 2017, when the iPhone 8 was cutting-edge and constantly being online still seemed like progress.
The world has changed a bit in the past nine years. Almost everyone carries a smartphone, and distraction and anxiety have gripped our society, making us worse at being present with each other. Replacing books with endless scrolling didn’t make us better listeners or deeper thinkers. If anything, it made it harder to sit with ourselves, or give someone our full attention.
Reading never made me less social. It taught me how to slow down, how to listen and how to stay with something long enough for it to matter. That’s the irony — reading is still good for us, maybe more than ever, but it’s become rare. Not because it lost its value, but because it requires sustained attention, which we don’t practice much anymore.
When you read, nothing happens instantly. There’s no highlight reel and no algorithm feeding you the most exciting moment every three seconds. You sit with confusion. You wait for meaning. Sometimes you read 10 pages and nothing dramatic happens at all. But when you look back, something has shifted. A character makes more sense. A sentence sticks. You feel something small, but real.
Nothing happens instantly at St. Paul’s, either. We can speed through homework assignments as quickly as possible to get to bed or play video games, or we can think longer. We can make connections to what we are reading or learning. Slow down and feel amazement in biology at the processes within our bodies or wonder at current events in humanities.
Reading taught me how to stay with a moment instead of rushing past it. And that skill of learning how to pay attention turns out to be the same skill you need to find joy in everyday life.
Because a joyful life isn’t built from huge, perfect moments. It’s built from noticing the small ones.
— Kyle Gump ’26
Because joy, I’ve learned, doesn’t usually show up in big, dramatic ways. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive perfectly packaged or scheduled weeks in advance. Most of the time, it’s quiet. And if you’re not paying attention, you miss it.
Many of my favorite memories have not come from big achievements or carefully planned events. They came from spontaneous, slightly ridiculous ideas, the kind that start with, “Let’s go” and very little planning. These moments are not because I love chaos or adrenaline, but because they feel free — they’re half-baked but full-hearted. They may not look impressive on paper, but they stay with you. A miles-long float down a river that only happened because someone spotted an inflatable raft at Target. A lunchtime thought that turned into a long hike. And just last Sunday, an evening of sledding down Drury hill with no higher purpose than “no school tomorrow.” These things aren’t planned days or weeks in advance and yet they create deeper friendships, shared stories and memories that outlast almost everything else.
In the middle of tough classes, sports, leadership roles and expectations, these moments of spontaneity and presence in the moment ground me. Sometimes they’re the only breath I get in a nonstop week. They break routine. They pull me out of my own head. They bring people together in a way that feels honest and real.
Joy doesn’t just happen. You have to make space for it, especially, when life feels too full.
I want to pause here and say something important. This isn’t a talk about being happy all the time. This isn’t about pretending life is easy or ignoring stress, pressure or anxiety. I know this talk could easily sound like sunshine and rainbows, but that’s not my experience.
There have been times when I’ve felt anxious, out of place or unsure of where I belonged. Times when I was surrounded by people and still felt disconnected. Times when I wondered whether everyone else had figured something out that I hadn’t.
What surprised me was what I found on the other side of that anxiety. It wasn’t constant happiness or confidence that magically appeared overnight. It was something smaller. I started finding belonging not through big accomplishments or labels, but through small moments of connection. Through shared experiences and by being present long enough to let relationships form naturally.
Reading helped me understand that, too. Books are full of characters who struggle, who feel uncertain, who don’t know exactly who they are becoming. They sit with discomfort. They grow slowly. They change in ways that aren’t always obvious in the moment. And through them, I learned that learning how to be and how to become takes time and patience.
That idea matters, especially in a place like St. Paul’s, where we’re busy, driven and often stretched thin. We all say we want connection. We want community. We want to feel like we belong. But those things don’t come from constant motion and constant distraction. They come from attention. They come from actually showing up. From being willing to stay in moments that are down to earth, uncomfortable and aren’t optimized for efficiency.
One of the gifts of having more time here is the chance to choose how we spend our attention. It’s tempting to fill every quiet moment, to stay busy, to distract ourselves when things feel uncomfortable. But what I’ve learned is that when you slow down enough to actually notice what’s happening around you, life opens up in unexpected ways. You notice people, you notice yourself, and you notice small joys that were there all along.
So, I’m not here to tell you to read more books, although I won’t argue against it. I’m here to suggest something simpler and harder: practice attention. Put yourself in situations where you can actually notice what’s happening. Let yourself be present without immediately reaching for distraction. Let yourself stay with moments that aren’t impressive or productive.
Because a joyful life isn’t built from huge, perfect moments. It’s built from noticing the small ones, the ones that don’t demand your attention but patiently wait for it. When you learn how to notice them, life starts to feel bigger, richer and more connected than you ever expected.
