Sunday 12 July 2015

We Are Not Alone

I have been asked many times why do I read books? What indeed could I get from spending so much time and money on words written by some guy who lived long before our time or whose life is/was totally different from us? What virtue lies in the stories of wizards, knights or monsters that are used to amuse small kids?

There were stories about brave men and women who fought courageously for what they believed in. Then there were stories about common people who acted heroically in the face of danger for their families & friends and did great deeds. Stories of simple life’s of people having sorrows of their own.

It was not a conscious effort on my part to start reading novels. It was like an unknown connection that I felt, I had with stories of men and women living different lives than me that drew me towards reading. It was partially my curiosity about people that made me search for answers. I used to wonder when I was sad that why god made me miserable. I used to think I was the only one who had to face difficulties in life. Reading books told me it was not so. There was comfort there knowing everyone have felt the same way I did. The most consolation a person can get is by knowing that he/she is not alone.

Now the questions come:

Why we feel what we feel? Why we cry for some trivial a thing, as assumed by onlooker’s? Why something’s/someone mean so much to us than the rest of the world never could? Does our little or big obsessions even justified? How can we know the answers before even making those decisions? Where you are right now, you’ll never be again. So how can we be prepared for what is to come, when we never have been there?

“A smart man learns from his mistakes.
A wise one learns from the mistakes of others.”

You learn from experiences of others. All the answers are there in the books which people have written, opening their mind and souls for the world to see. Their stories are a mirage created from their feelings, given shape by their imagination and perfected by their version of the world. A magic that is as real as the person who created it. For they have lived those life’s a hundred times before inscribing them on paper.

In the virtual world which we live now, we are losing the traits of humanity. We the privileged few are far from deeper meanings of our coexistence in this world than we could imagine. For nobody is there to teach us the need of compassion. We have lived in a sheltered life’s so far in metro cities with all the materialistic pleasures the world could offer. But all the virtual realities vanishes very fast when we have to face adversity. The emptiness that surrounds us then is very real and frightening indeed.

Then how to we fill these empty spaces in our life, for we are more concerned about piling petty materialistic pleasures for ourselves that we do not see the whole picture. We were not born to merely exist. We were meant to coexist with our fellow humans. For this we need to understand each other and only then we can move forward with humanity.

The stories about simple people living there life’s peacefully in some forgotten corners of the world will teach you the most important things there is to learn: empathy, kindness and generosity. To help someone without letting that person know, to do a good deed without selfish motives or sacrificing something for the greater good; these can be learnt from those stories of simple of men and women.


I for one believe that if all of us were to learn what the books have to teach us; the world will be a better place to live in.


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