Deposit of spirit or blackened pages between thicker covers? Extra-ordinary
substance of energy, or tedious words, ideas, images considerably lacking appeal?
The restless, unreflective, mundane individual will have the stupendous liberty
to esteem reading books as “a waste of time”. In what chaotic economy
of time is “reading” regarded merely as waste, if not in the facile
individual’s? What is hidden in the chambers of meaning, beneath such
an inference? What illnesses of the sprit does it reveal? v3g6gc
Giving-in to the immense pulsations of everyday living is probably the handiest
and most frequent choice many individuals make? Adhering to the dynamic rhythm
of the “immediate everyday” is unbelievably common. And yet, there
exists that non-prevalent layer of people who simply refuse not to acknowledge
that something immense is happening outside of them, but mostly inside their
inner-most being. That limited-number of people make soaring efforts to slow
the unrolling of life and to immortalize realities of the heart, the soul, realities
of human splendor and mystery, realities of the outside world in its enormousness
- giving birth, after painful travails to….books.
How does the spirit penetrate the world? Through what mediums does an idea,
born in the intimacy of one’s mind, capture the whole world, raising it
to new heights or destroying it? Out of this -; the miracle of books and
their hidden unfathomable energy!
Carriers of thought, propagators of ideas, and essentially means of communication,
books, in their “onthological timidity” are on the shaken battle
ground of comm. They are threatened by many other means, born within the technological
era and all its innovations, with remarkable effectiveness, rapidity and not
the least, appeal, due to its main characteristic -;handiness-. How infinitely
handier are a few mouse clicks while surfing unhindered on the inexhaustible
internet, than painful linear discipline of reading. What enormous difference
between the multitude of images given on a television screen and the laborious
mental activity of birthing images out of mere words in text blocks? On such
platforms of debate books seem to loose ground, and reading as a “waste
of time” gaining in legitimacy.
“Life is outside books. Live big in real life. Why risk becoming inadequate
in life by reading?” Surely books or at least good ones have (or should
have) this naughty habit of pulling you out of the real word and subtly moving
you in their indefinite world. Many cases of unhealthy book experiences speak-out
for the case of book-determined-real-life-inadequacy. Immersed in the unreal
world of books the danger of forgetting that real life is outside the covers,
is perpetually present. So, yes there are serious, real challenges books meet.
And yes, some battles may be won, from a certain stand-point, by the TV, Internet,
radio or the innumerable sum of other activities life includes.
Yet who can undermine the miraculous encounter with a book? Who can resist a
dance with such shy and charming beings? Answer: many. Many who never have and
never will approach books, denying the value and great profit of reading. But
what great a loss!
And what inestimable gain can reading bring upon a being I!I
