"Books?
Deposit of spirit or blackened pages between thicker covers? Extra-ordinary substance of energy, or tedious words, ideas, images considerably lacking appeal? The restless, unreflective, mundane individual will have the stupendous liberty to esteem reading books as "a waste of time". In what chaotic economy of time is "reading" regarded merely as waste, if not in the facile individual's? What is hidden in the chambers of meaning, beneath such an inference? What illnesses of the sprit does it reveal?
Giving-in to the immense pulsations of everyday living is probably the handiest and most frequent choice many individuals make? Adhering to the dynamic rhythm of the "immediate everyday" is unbelievably common. And yet, there exists that non-prevalent layer of people who simply refuse not to acknowledge that something immense is happening outside of them, but mostly inside their inner-most being. That limited-number of people make soaring efforts to slow the unrolling of life and to immortalize realities of the heart, the soul, realities of human splendor and mystery, realities of the outside world in its enormousness - giving birth, after painful travails to..books.
How does the spirit penetrate the world? Through what mediums does an idea, born in the intimacy of one's mind, capture the whole world, raising it to new heights or destroying it? Out of this - the miracle of books and their hidden unfathomable energy!
Carriers of thought, propagators of ideas, and essentially means of communication, books, in their "onthological timidity" are on the shaken battle ground of comm. They are threatened by many other means, born within the technological era and all its innovations, with remarkable effectiveness, rapidity and not the least, appeal, due to its main characteristic -handiness-. How infinitely handier are a few mouse clicks while surfing unhindered on the inexhaustible internet, than painful linear discipline of reading. What enormous difference between the multitude of images given on a television screen and the laborious mental activity of birthing images out of mere words in text blocks? On such platforms of debate books seem to loose ground, and reading as a "waste of time" gaining in legitimacy.
"Life is outside books. Live big in real life. Why risk becoming inadequate in life by reading?" Surely books or at least good ones have (or should have) this naughty habit of pulling you out of the real word and subtly moving you in their indefinite world. Many cases of unhealthy book experiences speak-out for the case of book-determined-real-life-inadequacy. Immersed in the unreal world of books the danger of forgetting that real life is outside the covers, is perpetually present. So, yes there are serious, real challenges books meet. And yes, some battles may be won, from a certain stand-point, by the TV, Internet, radio or the innumerable sum of other activities life includes.
Yet who can undermine the miraculous encounter with a book? Who can resist a dance with such shy and charming beings? Answer: many. Many who never have and never will approach books, denying the value and great profit of reading. But what great a loss!
And what inestimable gain can reading bring upon a being ~!~
