My Passion for Reading Keeps Me Enthusiastic About Life

By Youzhou

One of the several things for which I ought to be grateful to my late mother is my passion for reading. This was something that Mummy inculcated in me when I was little. TV was yet to arrive in the part of the world where we lived, and so, reading books was still something that many children did. My parents were reasonably well-off economically, but still, in those days, buying all the many books for us children that they did over the years must have been quite a major investment for them. Every once in a while, I would accompany Mummy to a huge market, which was one of the major shopping areas in the city where we lived. There were probably hundreds of little shops in the market, and Mummy would leave me at what was possibly the only bookshop there while she set off to do her shopping. The bookshop was tiny—probably just a couple of square feet in size—but it was packed with books, many of them from other countries. By the time Mummy returned from her shopping, I would, if I am not wrong, almost always have already selected a book for myself, and I don’t recall Mummy ever refusing to buy it for me, no matter what its cost. In addition, Mummy would herself select books which she probably thought would be good for us—and so, our collection at home also included several illustrated tomes that she had procured for us on a wide range of subjects, including even a complete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was something that in those days few families could afford.

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I am in my mid-50s now and have a lot of time on my hands. Love for reading, which Mummy reared me on when I was little, is one major thing that keeps me, at this age, still enthusiastic about living. Even now I love to learn new things, gain new insights, broaden my horizons and deepen my understanding of things, and for me, reading is a really great way to do this. I don’t know what I would have done with all the time that I now have had I not been passionate about reading. I hope to remain passionate about reading till the very end.

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Over the years, my reading tastes have, quite naturally, changed. As a child, I loved fairy tales and stories about enchanted lands—Enid Blyton was my favourite author, as she quite possibly was for millions of other children around the world. As I grew older, comics—such as Tintin, Casper, Dennis the Menace, Little Lota, and Asterix and Obelix—took their place, only to be soon replaced with detective novels and romances. Later on, when I was in university, I read mainly books about social issues, culture, history and religion. After I began earning, I spent a good portion of my income on books, but I can’t say that I read all the many books that I bought. Over the decades, I probably purchased several hundred, or even a couple of thousand, books that I never got down to finishing and which I later donated to a library, gifted to someone or else sold off. An important lesson to be learnt here: Unless it is really necessary, it might not be wise to buy a new book (especially if it is expensive) if you haven’t as yet finished all the books that you already have.

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These days, one of my favourite sorts of books are memoirs of people who did good things with their lives and made a significant positive contribution to the world, in some field or the other. I love to discover how these people faced the challenges that came their way and availed of the opportunities that they were provided in order to make a positive difference to the lives of others, in this way adding to the stock of goodness in the world. When I read about such people, I feel inspired by their example. At my age and given my present circumstances, I might not be able to do all the things that they did, but even then, as long as the Creator keeps me alive on this planet, I too can aspire to live in a similarly meaningful manner.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can say that had I been enthusiastic about this genre of writing—memoirs of inspiring men and women—much earlier on in my life, when I was considerably younger, I might have saved myself from squandering a great deal of time and resources on what I now see as unwholesome purposes. In my younger days, had I been passionate about reading about and learning from the lives of inspiring people, the course of my own life might have been very different. I might have been a much better person than I am and might have used my time and resources in a much better way than I actually did.

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For young people, it is really vital to have positive role models who can inspire them so that they use their gift of life in a truly good manner. If they don’t find such persons at home or in school, they can gain access to them by reading books, and even watching videos and films about them, which, today, there is no dearth of. When I was a child, things were, of course, very different. Books on inspiring people were hard to come by, and, needless to say, things like the Internet, smartphones and Youtube didn’t exist, probably not even in anyone’s wildest imagination. But today, such resources are easily available, and in plenty. There is now a plethora of easily accessible printed and audio-visual materials through which we can learn about and be motivated by the lives of inspiring people from across the world and down the ages.

I don’t have any children, but if I did, encouraging them to learn from people who led truly meaningful lives by reading their memoirs and watching films and videos about them would be at the very core of my parenting strategy. This is because I now realise how really important it is for young people to be inspired by the example of those who have used, in a truly good way, the gift of life that the Creator had bestowed them with so that they, too, can do likewise.