Books: A Look Beyond
Books. A small word. One syllable. Nothing impressive. For some people it holds no special meaning, just a thing with many pages and words, and hopefully some pictures. For others it is a cause of frustration and repulsion: they’re not “cool”, they’re “long and boring” and “they remind me of school and homework”, and “why would I read the book when I can watch the movie?”. For others, they are a source of fun, a pleasant and harmless pastime. If you belong to any of these groups, read on, my friend, and allow me to share with you why books are more than that. And, if you belong to that last, small group of people, to whom books are a vitality, an unseverable part of existence, please read on, my friend, for you will probably enjoy someone echoing your thoughts.
Books. Portals to foreign places, and different times. Have you ever wished to escape? change your surroundings? maybe change where you live, who you live with, the people around you? or are you just curious to discover the world, and what it holds and hides? Why don’t you grab a book? Travel to wherever you want, meet with whoever you wish, do whatever you like. Absorb new surroundings. And I would dare say, risking that you think I’m crazy, meet new people… Get new friends, new heroes to look up to, and enemies to loath. Thousands and thousands of people I have met in books: characters I’ve loved, characters I’ve hated, some I respect and others I curse… and maybe some that I have fallen in love with. But from all, I have learned much. Thousands and thousands of places I have visited through books: I’ve been to almost every country on Earth, I’ve been to distant galaxies, to realms beyond the canvas of time and space, to places where magic exists and time is twisted. But also to places that felt more real than the world we live in: where thoughts and emotions are honest, simple, and pure; places of justice, loyalty, courage and wisdom. Places that are above and beyond the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.
“Books change us. Books save us. I know this because it happened to me.” — Elif Shafak
Books. Mirrors of humanity. It is really easy to drown in a book and its ideas, theories, characters, places and events… and to forget that these words and phrases creating magic and speaking wisdom are written by another person, just like ourselves. We forget that these words on paper are the birth children of hours of contemplation, of years of research, and sometimes of sudden flashes of other-worldly inspiration. However, what we forget the most is that each book is the birth child of every single book that has come before it; each book springs from thousands of ideas and theories, beliefs and traditions, conversations and discussions that have come before it. Each book is based on Wisdom that was, and will contribute to Wisdom that will be. Every book is a living (yes, living, because ideas are living creatures) manifestation of Humanity’s only (though many times forgotten) goal: the search for the Truth. And so books mirror what Humanity really wants: what transcends the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.
“Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one own’s self.” — Franz Kafka
Books. Reflections of each one of us, and refiners of our true nature. In a world drowning in materialism, egotism and selfishness, a world that seems every day to be drifting further from the essentials of life: love, understanding, forgiveness and honesty; books come as a reminder that we are not alone, that everything can get better. That no matter how lonely or left out we might feel, no matter how tough life can get, no matter how empty, disoriented or hurt we might be, we are never alone. What we are going through, many have before. What hurts us has hurt others before us. Books deliver great comfort because they show us that others have survived, so why wouldn’t we? How many times has a person been reading the words of another and thought: “This is exactly how I feel!!” or “Thank you for that!!” Books deliver answers, how many times has a reader been lost and found the answer needed in something as small as a poem verse? Books grow our sense of empathy, a virtue becoming scarce in the world. For all the feelings that a reader feels while devouring a book: happiness, sadness, pity, anger, gloriousness, excitement… are contributing to the refinement of the reader’s feelings, and the ascendance of their virtues. Books remove us from our own ego-centered existence and connect us with all that is living, has lived and will ever live: Human, Nature, and God. Removing us from the triviality and mundanity of everyday life.
“ A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors” — Charles Baudelaire
Books. I could have written to you about how healthy reading is, or how it will help you become rich and successful, and how every successful person reads three hundred books a year. But I did not, and would never. Because it is anathema to simplify something as spiritual and transcendent as reading into just another mundane tool of material life. Instead, I have tried to share with you, as accurately as I could though words fail me, the passion I have for books, and the Life behind them. For indeed this is what reading is: a passion. It is a flame that consumes the reader, purifying the person’s whole being with its heat, enlightening the human and Humanity with the dazzling lights of Truth and Beauty. I could talk a lot more, but it would never be enough. So why don’t you try yourself? A hidden garden of endless universes is waiting for you, at the flip of a book cover. So open the door, and step out.
