Have we let the written word slip through our fingers, dear reader? Is a good book a thing of the past? Do you remember what it was like to read? Actually read? Holding an open book and a flashlight under the bedcovers, with eyes throbbing in the dim light, but heart pounding because Nancy Drew and her crew were on the verge of discovering some criminal mastermind? Remember hiding a novel under your desk in school and surreptitiously peeking at it during every break to quickly read ten more lines?
Do the children of today know what old books smell like? To gently open an old novel, find those dog-eared pages where someone had paused reading, faintly annoyed that real life had interrupted them? To bury your nose into that ‘old books and libraries’ smell, smooth your palms over that hardcover, guessing what sort of book it could be just by looking at the cover images, the font of the title…. What do you mean by ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’? Isn’t that how readers fall in love with them?
I remember trying to read, well, this is a tiny bit embarrassing, but – The FountainHead. Yes, that clichéd name-drop – but I did try to read it; I was 15 at the time. You know the feeling you get at the ends of your teeth, biting into that piece of meat with bones in it, and you know it is a little tough, but you are going to enjoy the gnawing and the chewing?
Yes, that primal feeling is what I had when I started reading the book. It was humongous for the lazy teenager in me, who loathed her schoolbooks that were a quarter of that size. But I knew there was a story between the pages of that ‘fat’ book; there was a whole new world, new people I could fall in love with, new ideas my brain could chew on, even a little bit of old-fashioned romance (got a bit more than I bargained for there). And I plodded through that book, cover to cover. I did not essentially follow every word on the page, and although I absolutely lapped up Howard’s intensity and rebellious nature, I did not necessarily comprehend why he had to be so vehement about buildings. I get it now, no doubt. Come to think of it, the main attraction of the book was this strange, new philosophy that I couldn’t quite comprehend, and suddenly I needed to know more!
That is what reading does to a person – it shows you the possibility of other worlds, different people, philosophies, belief systems and experiences that you had no idea about. And it brings them to you through the words of educated, balanced minds that do not take their job lightly. They put word to paper with the knowledge of the burden that lies on their shoulders. A writer deliberates before writing the first sentence. Imagine writing a book on a philosophy, a theory or an idea that could change the very foundations of the modern thinker! You think books are written on a whim? Absolutely not! They are precious things forged from the very fibres of the soul of a person, wrung out and fashioned into words, sentences and phrases that bring you the essence of their consciousness.
And that, my dear reader, is gold! The written word is a precious metal, that gleaming jewel that you guard with your might, and hold out in your palms now and then, to gaze with gleaming eyes at the wonder of it all.
How unfortunate it is, then, that today’s world ignores these jewels, opting instead for the cheap shimmer of that smartphone – that abomination that is bringing the world so close together that it is choking the human mind. Genuine and original exposition dies a feeble death within the confines of pseudo-intellectualism and ‘woke’ discourse.
More people today get their awareness of their state of being from Amy Schumer than they do from Simon Sinek. Wait, do they even know who Simon Sinek is? They get their ‘wokeness’ from the ramblings of spur-of-the-moment, urgent fingers that want to be ‘first to comment!’ more than anything else. It is alarming how the same blasé phrases, memes and lingo meant for incredulous, slice-of-life
social media events are callously employed to set down opinions on the atrocious behavior of celebrities and world leaders!
Serious thought has taken the backseat, and with it have disappeared conviction and judgment and a principled outlook to life. What the human race is left with is a vague irritation at the suspicion that things may be plummeting out of control, yet unable to raise its head up from the smartphone because of the crick in the neck – you know you have one right now.
Putting pen to paper always changed the world – be it a Mein Kampf, a Wings of Fire, or a Harry Potter… – and reading it was the way that change was put into motion. By losing our desire to read, are we losing our ability to change and evolve? But isn’t that the one thing we most congratulated ourselves on? After all, that is what makes us human, isn’t it?
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