Food and Books

“I don’t read books”

Or

“I don’t read novels”

One of them. But both equally terrifying.

Some guy newly coming to our Toastmasters meeting told me this. I was horrified. I didn’t know exactly why, but I was. Later on, I read somewhere. Books are like food for our brains. We eat food for our bodies, to have energy, to feel good, to regenerate, to keep going… Although we eat, we still become hungry after a few hours. After half a day maybe. Not more than that.

Why do we eat then?

Simply because our bodies are in constant need of food. Some people even become gourmet and specialise on food.

What about books?

Why do we read them?

We don’t need books like we need food. Or do we?

What is the reason of reading? After some time, we forget what the book was about. We don’t necessarily forget the whole story. We forget the details. We forget how the story progressed. After several years, we may even forget the story altogether. Not more than a couple of sentences may remain in our memories. Yet, our souls, our brains suck the meaning of the books and keep them in. They turn us into who we are.  We will still know how that book made us feel 10 or even 20 years later.

Books are food for our brain and more importantly for our soul. Not reading means that we prefer not to feed our soul. Our bodies make us keep going. Our souls? They make the life enjoyable and fun and worth living!

Just like food, they, sort of, disappear in time. Yet, before disappearing, they feed our souls, our thoughts, our perspectives. They make us understand others. They make it easier to be emphatic. Especially the books of Dostoyevsky. His books have always been a sort of gateway to people’s souls. He has a great and very deep understanding of human psychology. If a teenager reads his books, he will learn a lot about growing up, understanding one another and much more. This way, we can have a more empathetic society.

Let’s go back to what reading does to us. The more we read, the more we learn and grow and be wiser and wiser. Some books, one needs to read three times in a lifetime. Once as a teenager.

Once as an adult, in our 30s or 40s.

And a last time in our later life, after retirement probably.

I’m talking about the world classics. At each time, the things we understand from the books differs. Each time, we see another perspective and learn that.

There are also self-help books. To be perfectly honest, I am not a particular fan of them. They are selling a lot. And they are supposed to teach the readers how to get better at their respective subjects. They are supposed to help individuals to be more successful and better in life. However, I am not sure that the information shared there is applied to life by the readers. The novels are fiction but have a story to tell. They are life stories. So, relating to the novels is a lot easier, in my opinion. I, almost always, think of myself as the hero of the novel and read it with that feeling.

Yet, if it is about reading in general, I think self-help books may also be considered a good option.

There are all sorts of books. Fiction, non-fiction, history, biography, psychology and many other types. Each individual may read what they like. However, not reading or saying that one does not read, is not easy to swallow for me. It means that such people are only interested in feeding their souls. In other words, they are more prone to be manipulated and guided to do what the market tells them to do.

Saying these, I am not trying to judge the ones who do not read. To be perfectly honest, I am not reading as I used to. With the world of constant smart phones, notifications and excessive stimuli, it is not easy to focus. Not like before. I have different solutions to propose (I delivered a speech at a Toastmasters meeting about it). Carrying a book may not be an easy task for all of us. We can use e-readers like Kindle or Kobo. If one does not want to carry another device, one can use their phones, computers or tablets instead. The phone screens got quite big in recent years and the screen resolutions are also quite good even with basic phones. Turning that screen to have a black screen with white writing may also be a good option. If one does not want to look at a screen, there is another option: Audiobooks. I discovered them back in 2006 and am using them ever since. Especially during commute, audiobooks help me a lot. All we have to do is to try to focus on the story we are listening to. Not an extremely difficult task, to be fair.

In the end, it is all about feeding our souls. Feeding our souls are very important. Even more important than feeding our bodies, one may argue. I will, though, not go that far.

If we feed our souls as well as our bodies, we will become more understanding, more empathetic and this will result in a better world for all of us. Are we not trying to “Save the world”? What better way to save it by starting from ourselves! If we change ourselves, it will be a kickstarter to change the world. We will become better, thus we will have a better world to live in.

It is, though, very important with what we feed our souls. If we feed it with books like “Mein Kampf” or “My Fight” from Adolf Hitler, we may become more racist and even think that he was right at what he did. The core of our readings also determine what kind of person we are going to become. What kind of soul we will have in the end. Just like junk food, there are “junk books”.  Some books may take us to extreme thoughts and even violence. Some books may be trying to justify acts of violence or racism or worse. Junk food is bad for our health, our physical bodies. Junk books do the same for our brains, our souls. And the results are even worse. 

Ours is a time unlike any time in the past. It will not get any better unless we take control and better ourselves. What better way to use the wisdom of the people who lived in the past and showed us this with their novels?

What do you think?