I recently came across this prompt: “In an Instagram post, best-selling British author Matt Haig cheered the impact of reading. “A good novel is the best invention humans have ever created for imagining other lives,” he wrote. How have you experienced such insight from reading? What did you read and how did it alter the way you understand yourself and others?“
Even though it is a supplemental essay prompt, it got me thinking about my favorite passion: reading. And who needs more inspiration than that!
I’m dead.
I’m also alive.
I’m a swimmer.
But I’m afraid of the water.
I won the Nobel Prize for literature.
But I never learnt to read or write.
I take the best photographs.
But I can’t see.
I’ve lived a thousand lives, but I’ve not been born yet.
The Many Lives of Albie Bright introduced me to parallel worlds, and physics text books disillusioned my fascination. Agatha Christie taught me deduction but it was Katniss Everdeen who ingrained survival. Kant is my ultimate philosophical question and Nora Seed made me question my existence. Robert Frost had just one road he didn’t take, but I have multiple.
I have regretted many things in life. Not becoming an Olympic swimmer, a state tennis champion, the youngest international best-selling author, a national level debater, developing a green thumb, and even starting baking late. I’ve circled back to trying just a little bit more for years – it’s what made me learn music for 9 years before I finally acknowledged my limitations.
One should, after all, know whether they’re Sherlock or Watson.
But I’m neither and all, everything at once.
When people talk about their favourite books, I freeze. When we solve logical puzzles as a class I excel. During English discussions I have to force myself to stop, and reading historical fiction is my favourite past time even though I tried to get out of doing the subject in high school. I make connections between biology and literature, Hitler and my principal. I argue that Stalin had foresight, and then turn around and say he was stupid.
Reading has shown me that I’m not just one character. I’m all of them, and none of them at the same time. I encapsulate Poirot but also Jacky Hart. I can burst with emotions and be emotionless. I haven’t completely read a book (in the true sense) and, even though I’ve barely made a dent in perusing the world’s literature, I have learnt that the best characters are not multi-dimensional, they’re unidimensional. Because characters with just one enhanced aspect have helped me dive into that particular aspect for myself. To hone, weed and smooth over the cracks until I’m happy – and then return to the same book years down the line and reevaluate my journey.
Reading is not my just my passion, or my past time. It’s not even a method of escaping or rewinding. Reading is a way of life. It means understanding the intent of the author, comparing it with your own emotions and then melding the two into a personally perfect gelato of life.
Because books are like gelatos. Eating too many end up giving you a cold head rush, but what’s the experience without it (;
