READ, READ AND NEVER STOP READING
Imagine
the WORLD without BOOKS, or the ability to read, in other word imagine what
human being would be without the alphabets, without writing and without books.
Many would signify human existence without books and literacy almost
unrecognizable. All our cultures all our religions all our most cherished
values and the most veritable skills namely; care for children, loved ones, the
old and the sick, farming, the building of houses, roads, bridges etc are come
from books or some special books were ability to write down our experiences and
memories for others to know them, in a word passion to read them and store them
for succeeding generation.
It
is in this sense that reading or the ability to read or the habit to reading its
central to human culture, without reading or the ability to read we would not
be able to understand our religions and what they teach us. I had to lived and
reached fulfilled life without pain in the body or terror in the mind.
A
long time ago when human being had not yet invented writing, whether phonetic
or alphabetic, human beings lived more or less like the animals living in caves,
forging for foods, or only living and dying without any memory or heritage, but
when human being invented writing or the signs by which to symbolize themselves
in the world by which the lived they became truly human beings that’s very
different from the other animals.
It
was then on, that human being invented memory and culture the capacity and need
to shape the mould of the Eiffel pot to mould clay of a certain pattern to
build the houses in certain styles to mark day and night and time with the
purpose, to store food for the next day, and to seek to know who they were in
relation to the mountains, rivers, trees, rocks and other human beings.
But
the invention of writing is also the invention of reading for as per as we know
only human beings can read and therefore write, human culturing facts available
only to those who can read, what we called educative people are really those
who are literate that’s those in the possession of alphabets, namely those who can
read, and do read or have read a great deal of books and are to the same degree
a creative books in writing and learning.
This
is cheaply why modern society today there are the skilled and the unskilled.
The skilled are those who have been to school or college, have read the great
deal of those books were required to read from primary school through the university.
The
skilled or those who have read and are continually reading are rewarded with
the important position or roles in the society, for example it is hard to
imagine a governor, a president, doctor, an engineer, a pilot or a professor
who is not read, or who do not previously do any read in other word who is not
educated.
But
there are other benefits of reading, or having read or being able to read.
Reading enlarges the mind, those who have read many many books are likely to be
broadminded, cosmopolitan, nice and pleasant. Then enlarge their knowledge to
other people, other culture, and can be called truly human beings, because
their mind can appreciate or has accommodated differences between themselves
and others.
Indeed,
such experience such refinement comes and can come only with the passion to
reading. It is reading which makes possible may recalled the human spirits or
what is called culture, the pursue to verification knowledge, spiritual growth,
and what the great 19th century English humanist Mathew Ornald
called in a memorable phrase sweetness of light or the best that has been
taught and said in the world.
It
is also in this sense that reading excites the imagination it takes one to new
experiences, to different kind of people and cultures, to fantasy worlds,
realistic worlds, so realistic vision life and places, and the new characters and
the identities and consciousnesses.
Reading
must go on reading is in this sense is a voyage to yourself to ourselves, and
could therefore make you discover something that yourself would thought could
not think but could appreciate. In this sense then reading makes more and more
about who we are, and what we can do for the world; our societies, our
community, or our family.
This
is in fact the key reason why we go to school, or seek formal education to
expand our horizons and identity, and the skills by which would make our life
better and better, and pass on our heritage or culture to our children and our
children’s children. But the things that I have mentioned go on forever and do
not stop even for a moment, even when die, others will live on carry them
along.
It
is also in this sense that reading cannot and would never stop, yeah this is
also why we too must go on reading. First if only to remain human, second if
only to know more about our identity including our religion, the society, the
world and the universe. Therefore read, read, read and never stop reading.
Read
everything you can from your religious textbooks, your school books, and the
stories in the other books, to the newspapers, the road signs and the writing on
bridges, walls and billboards. This is why I would recommend you to read at
least two pages every day before you go to bed. Read the interesting stories in
Magana
Jari Ce, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1001 Nights, Things Fall Apart, Jiki
Magayi, The Novels of Garcia Marquez, Naguib Mahfouz, and Joseph Conrad, Plays
of Shakespeare, The Poems of Ummul Hayam, Pablo Naruda, Word’s Word and Mudi
Sipikin, The Philosophical Rumination of Ibn Rushd and the hundreds of
exciting stories in books written in our native languages. For example read The
Qur’an, The Bible, The Bagabi Gita, Book of the Death, The Dictionary etc.
Read poems, novels, plays, Newspaper reports, anything you can lay your hands
on.
You
can read not only in the library, but also in your room, in the toilet, or in
the kitchen, or everywhere you happen to be. Let me emphasize this; reading is
an awaresis, an awaresis which comes over to you like an absolute surprise, but
it is also a desert guide and a prayer that knows its destination. This is why
to read or to engage in reading is to invent, and to invent would be to know
and how to say come and to answer the come of other human beings.
Reading
is as they say it gives hope and give human beings a life, you must therefore
read, and read and read, only then can be write, and be able to write, only then
can be educated, only then can be literate and civilized.
In
conclusion, if we all stop reading, or would not read or can’t read then there
would be no books, schools, money, cars, bicycles, roads, bridges, houses,
beds, radios, clothes, shoes indeed society itself or in other word we the
human beings.
Many of you would say this is unimaginable or unthinkable or even calamities the situation which there are no books, no readers, or no reading itself. If this is the case then it all goes to show how important reading is, for without books, readers and reading we will all be thrown back to the earliest beginning of time when human beings lived like the animals that we see around us today only depended on the natural world and therefore without culture, intelligence or enlightenment.
