Why you should read instead of watch

With the omnipresence of various television programmes and movies to satiate our need for visual entertainment, how many of us still read?

By reading I don't mean scrolling through the neverending feeds of social media, reading about why a certain clothing brand is the best, people's unyielding arguments online or about a friend's latest shenanigans in a new foreign country. I mean pick up a book, sit down in a coffee shop and just let the world around you drone into this blur. When you read, you teleport from the place you are at into this fictitious wonderful world. A world which you conjured, where the trees can be blue and the stream flowing a baby lavender. Where pigs can fly and the sky's not even a limit. You can step into a closet and find yourself in a winter wonderland called Narnia, travel through time and places, and possess any powers you can ever fathom.

Reading lets you escape into a world where the most magical things can happen. You are the owner of your imagination, and the places you travel to are limited only by the parameters of your imagination - which runs infinite across galaxies.

Reading feeds your soul, your creativity. It fuels your lust for wonder and excitement. You watch as the black and white combinations of words on the page transform into a picturesque scene. The author tells one story, but you interpret and view it as your own. Different people can look at the same words and see distinct images. You see what you read, and what this ability to change what someone writes into moving images in your mind is amazing.

It's the best gift I have ever discovered ever since I was reading Enid Blyton as a little girl. As a young child the fertility of your imagination is discovered as you dive into the experience of creating your own little world, a little bubble to escape to, everytime you pick up a book. It's a world which you create alone, but you never truly are. You're surrounded with mystical creatures, heroes, villains and talking animals. You witness magic, enchantment and wanderlust. This sense of power and awe that one experiences through reading is probably the reason why a movie has never been better than the book. One can never find a series of motion pictures put together by the best director, characters depicted by the best actors/actresses Hollywood can buy, better than the scenes produced by the spinning wheels of one's imagination.

It's a lost art, with ebooks and online articles and the glamorization of visual entertainment. Put down your movie tickets, iPads and handphones. Pick up a book.

Metamorphosis

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

― Plato, The Symposium


I read this some time ago, but it came to my memory only when someone mentioned it today. I adore Greek mythology, tarot card readings, magic and most pseudo sciences as much as the next guy. When people speak of romance and relationships, terms such as the ultimate search for one's "other half" has been stereotyped to be the shiny pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. This mystifying idea of someone that has been allegedly created for you, that is specifically engineered to be your perfect fit in a puzzle, is one that I ascribe to. Now. Whenever someone gets out of a relationship and feel terrible, most people's comfort to the unfortunate soul is "don't worry, he/she probably wasn't the one for you. Your soul mate is still out there somewhere"

I read this article, a hypothesised world that every human being had an electronic bracelet embedded on their wrist, much like the ones in the move In Time. But instead of stating the time of your death, counted down to the exact moment you will make contact with your soul mate. In the story, many people didn't want the ruined novelty of having fate tell you exactly when the person you will spend the rest of your life with will surface. We wish to have a hold, a sense of power, over our destiny and with that comes the need for free will. Especially in affairs of the heart, where the soul is deemed to be the main reason that distinguishes human beings from other species. Our soul is what makes us us, what differentiates from us artificial intelligence created robots (as evident in the movie Never Let Me Go - but I digress).

I wouldn't say that I grew up in an incomplete environment - despite the fact that my dad was nonexistent for most parts of my life, my other family members more than made up for it. I was nurtured in a caring and supportive environment, with sufficient food on my plate and more love than I could ask for. I am lucky. One thing that stuck with me through childhood was viewing my parents' relationship transform from a small crack in their marriage to a dilapidated building crumbling to pieces after being struck by an atomic bomb. At a young age, I witnessed my father hitting my mother, my mother crying and hiding the fact that my dad was on the edge of walking out on us from the children, my father cheating on my mother with one of their friends and my mother doing everything she can to make up for the fact that while my father was alive and well, he did not exist in my world.

I learnt of this process called triangulation - where when relationships between 2 people experience tension, they spread this tension over 3 relationships by triangulating a third party. Being the eldest of the 3 children, my mother chose to confide in my secrets of my father's affairs. Additionally, whenever my father wanted to make excuses to go out and see his "friend" who I was well aware was his mistress, I had to keep secrets from my siblings and mother. With experiences like this I was told by almost all the female members of my family to not trust any guy. Growing up in 10 years of girls' school fuelled this feministic mindset that all guys were bad and that they were not to be trusted.

So of course, this is accompanied by a few years of me using guys and hurting them, being afraid of commitment and ruining some of my closest friendships. Up until last year, I didn't believe that any one guy is enough for me to be both physically and emotionally satisfied with. I didn't believe in forever, and that I could be happy with just one person. Suddenly it was like I metamorphosed and the part of me that was always unsatisfied with relationships and filled with mistrust started to fade away.

Zeus was afraid of the power humans can have should they find their other halves. It took me a while, but I think I finally got it right.