The thoughts that follow are in some senses devoid practical sensibilities and real life circumstances.
I used to be a voracious reader once.
I would read under the blankets, with a torch.
I would read lying down, standing, upside down.
For those of you who know me in person, you know I have very weak eyes. So this wasn't always the best of ideas, but never one to listen to sagely advice, I kept at it.
Then somehow with time, I've come to a point where I barely read anymore.
This is about why I think that might be a good thing.
To be very honest, the change happened when I went to hostel and had the Internet at my beck and call, uninhibited, and uncensored.
Life became much more around geeky news, websites, movies, tv shows and porn, and lesser and lesser books would make their way to me.
When I look back, especially at the more recent years, is when I realise why it's might be a good thing I don't read as much, anymore.
Why I say this is because now, I do.
A cliched statement as it might be, I want to try and elaborate, if only for my sake, to rationalise.
tl;dr
Reading makes you experience something through someone else, the story and life of another.
Doing, will make those experiences truly yours.
Love Heartbreak. Pain. ?
Go out and love. Freely, with carefree abandon. You shall know and feel, much stronger, every emotion, in any book ever.
Go out and love. Freely, with carefree abandon. You shall know and feel, much stronger, every emotion, in any book ever.
Success. Struggle. Will. Grit. Failure. ?
Create things. Strive hard for something - a passion, a muse, a quest, a path not taken. Struggle. Fight. Cry.
No book will teach you the lessons you learn, nor empower you with the strength that doing this yourself will.
Create things. Strive hard for something - a passion, a muse, a quest, a path not taken. Struggle. Fight. Cry.
No book will teach you the lessons you learn, nor empower you with the strength that doing this yourself will.
Nature. Wildlife. Travels. Adventures. ?
Go out and travel. Hitchhike your way into the new. You will know nature, as it is meant to be known, and not described to you, as someone else knew it. You will experience the adrenalin of your adventure, not the adrenalin of someone else's.
So for all the time you spend reading books, try instead to go, LIVE.
DO what it is you most like to read about.
DO what it is you most like to read about.
Be the character of a book, in your own life. Make your life a book.
And may it, one day, be one of the greatest ever made.
4 comments:
Very ingeniously put, I enjoy reading more when I can't (or don't want to) love, travel or strive as you mention. I agree, what matters is the voyage, but maybe the star leading the way is equally important.
Humble edit: "is when I realise why it's might be a good thing" to "then I realise why it might be a good thing"
But there's so much that you can't live through and books are your way into that world. At the end of it all, you can only live one life, your life but books will show you millions other lived. And as you experience life through someones else's eyes, your own changes in parallel. Like everything else which doing involves, reading is just as much doing as the rest.
@kanica - I see your point, but I still believe that there is far far more one can just go out and do. Far more and because our very own - richer, experiences that we can have and gain from in whatever sense. Sure - experiences will change our own lives - I'd just wish we go out and *have* our own experiences do that, instead of someone else's account of what are often fictional experiences to start with.
Not denying. But reading is an experience to be had in itself. Think of all the amazing conversations that books inspired, all the ideologies that philosophers perpetuated which changed people's lives forever. I agree with the idea that one must be out there, doing things but reading is not the opposite of doing, it's doing itself, imo.
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