The first book I read in its entirety was one that I received as a prize at school in second grade, I don't remember the title of the book but I know for sure that it was a children's book, an educational book. That book whetted my appetite for reading and many years after I finished reading it I always had something to read on a daily basis.
The book that marked my childhood was Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper". The story of this book is about two children who were very much alike in physical appearance, one was a prince and the other a beggar, both fed up with the lives they lived, the prince with the strict rules of palace life and the beggar with the hard but free life he had, so they decide to "swap lives".
The prince finds himself in a world he totally dislikes and doesn't know how to get back to the palace, and the beggar doesn't want to leave the palace, clinging to the luxurious life there. I was 9 years old when I read this book and I can tell you that I read it "blindfolded". I was somewhat like that beggar, only I hadn't found my palace yet...
During middle school and high school, I read a lot, I did that until my last years of high school. I was at one time the only one in my class who read almost the whole library of my literature teacher, she very often gave me as an example in this regard. In the last years of high school, I discovered the night life, and books no longer made any sense.
I started reading again after I finished college, but reading at that time was more the result of a spiritual hunger than a need for knowledge. I read the Bhagavad Gita, the Ramayana, and many other books that Europeans, in general, don't approach and probably have never even heard of. At one point I ended up reading Nisargadatta Maharaj's books, I read 3 of them three times, one after the other, and then I stopped reading.
Nothing made sense anymore... Nothing I could read, of course. I started reading again a few years ago but I'm far from being an avid reader like I was when I was a young boy. I read very rarely and read very little these days. I regret that I took that break of many, many years from reading and I regret that I still don't devote even half an hour a day to reading.
That's why I chose to participate in @galenkp's writing challenge for this weekend and picked my entry to be something like: "I wish I spent more time reading..."
Why?... You would ask...
Let me tell you why I think reading is undervalued. When you open a book you enter a new world. Whether it is a history book, a novel, or a scientific guide, you can bet on the novelty that that world has for you. You may find yourself with certain characters or life situations, but you can be sure that no one is writing about you, almost everything you read is about what you are not.
Books can help you expand your horizons, but they also have the power to limit yourself, to the same extent that they have the ability to expand, it's a matter of choice. Some books are good, and some are just pathetic, but don't run away from the pathetic ones, they are worth reading too...
I've often had to learn all sorts of things by simply reading bad or boring books. I learned that I should avoid the kind of people from whom I have nothing to learn or who bore me just by the simple fact that I had read a few bad books in my life that gave me the same feeling as such persons. It may sound strange what I'm about to say, but sometimes reading certain "not so good books" has made me understand myself better.
the dust collectors...
By stepping out of the personal prison of thought and into the universe that a particular book author has created you come to realize the limitations, bad habits, and sometimes unnecessary desires you have and start looking for ways and means to get rid of these and replace em with better habits and mindsets.
I'm sure if I had read more my blog would probably look different now. You can't change the past, but you can definitely design a better future for yourself. Hence...
I'm not usually the guy taking these types of writing challenges, but I gave Galen's #weekendexperience a chance this Saturday and I'm glad I did that. This post will be "blockchained for life "and a reminder of what reading meant to me and why I should be devoting more time to it. I have the time, no doubt about that, I probably spend too much of it doing repetitive shit on social media that I could instead "waste on more reading".
What about you, do you still read? How often and what type of literature do you like?
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian