Read Books
Or articles on Medium!
Books left unread are like Gods without worshippers. They wither and fade away in our collective memory. Reading books is an act of faith, it’s a prayer! And as Soren Kierkegaard said,
“ the function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays. “
Here’s how reading changes us:
Read books and talk to the dead
Books are an Ouija board! Reading them enables a one-way communication channel with dead people. Granted, it’s not a real conversation, but isn’t it an incredible opportunity to access the minds of our ancestors and great thinkers? Not to mention the thrill of reading Grandma’s diary!
Read books and travel in time
“ Without libraries what have we? We have no past and no future,” said Ray Bradbury. Walking along the shelves of a well-stocked library, we can jump a few centuries back and forth within only a few steps. Opening some of the books from the science-fiction reading room can even send us a few millennia forward.
Read books and get headaches
When we have to read three times the same sentence, maybe it’s time to go to bed, maybe it’s time to throw this trash away, or maybe it’s philosophy. Reading Kant, Jung or Kierkegaard is a guarantee for headaches. It’s also, like many books, a guarantee to make us think, and open for ourselves new horizons. It’s where we can find keys to understand our world.
Read books and redecorate your home
Cicero said that ‘ a room without books is like a body without soul’. Here’s the three-steps recipe to save our souls: buy a book, read the book, and put it on a shelf. Why not simply buying and shelving? Because that would result in a shallow soul! And we want to have deep souls, don’t we?
Read books and dream a (brave) new world
Aldous Huxley told us:
“Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make their life full, significant, and interesting.”
Reading stimulates our imagination and takes us on incredible journeys. In the course of a few hours, we can gain another soul and live a different life. It’s all at the tip of our hands.
Just grab one and start reading!
