Books are Our Literary Friends
As a young child, my mother stressed the importance of reading. Being an avid reader herself, she made sure to pick a book for the young me whenever she went shopping. We would therefore spend most of our nights in the study going through books. At the time, I could not comprehend her obsession with books.
I could contend unsuccessfully to her that we should just watch TV like all the other families. She taught me one valuable lesson: I should always read a chapter of a book after every one episode of my favorite show to erase the negative effects of television. Seeing the way society is dumbed down now, I have to admit that my mother was right. Over the years, I have grown fond of books that I consider them my best friends.
Though it may sound absurd to most people when I proclaim that books are my best friend, the reality of the matter is that you can get from books whatever you seek from friends, even more. When you feel lonely and want company, books will be there to keep you company. They will also accompany you to whichever place you want to go, even if it is the bathroom. There are many limitations when it comes to human friends and they are not always there with you.
Books can never really go away, even if you lend them to people, you can always pick another one to keep you company. Furthermore, there are no limits to how many books you may have. In real life however you cannot have so many genuine friends. Some of them will be there for the sole reason of taking advantage of you.
Moreover, books are very entertaining. Depending on your taste and preferences, there is always a book that will keep you rooted to your seat for hours consuming chapter after chapter to know what will happen next. They transport you to a world of fantasy, which is full of thrill and suspense. It is possible that you may have crazy and entertaining friends, who take you on a series of adventures once in a while. However, there are limits and going beyond those limits means breaking the law.
But in books, there are no laws or restrictions, your mind goes into a trance of imagination and this state is only broken when the book closes. Furthermore, they are also very unpredictable. Even if you have read a book several times, you will always get a new concept or idea each time you reread it. It is as if you always skip some part of a book each time you go through it.
Books also do not demand much from us like our friends do. Aside from our attention and time, books do not require anything else from us. Real friends require a lot from us, which can be very exhausting to an introvert person like me. Friends want you to be always there for them. They want you to be present whenever they go shopping, they want you to fight their battles, they will borrow money from you, which they will never refund and they will forever quarrel and fight with you and then apologize later.
But when you grow older, you realize that the things you were fighting over were not worth it. You wonder what all the drama was all about and why you wasted your time pursuing things that never interested you or made you happy for the sake of impressing your friends. In fact, as you grow older, your circle becomes smaller and smaller. Most of the people you think are your friends now will move on with their lives and they will stop thinking about you.
Books are also very educative. All ideas, discoveries and phenomena have all been safely saved in books. They are therefore the most reliable sources of information. Whichever subject that interests you, you can have an in depth analysis of it in books. You can actually learn a lot from books than from professors and geniuses combined. This is because books preserve information for a longtime without changing it and are therefore more reliable than human memories.
In fact, you can always learn something new whenever you read, it does not matter which book you select. Even romantic novels can teach you something, for instance that true love always triumphs in the end. It won’t come as a surprise therefore that avid readers are naturally more intellectual than the average person.
Books are also very loyal. You can put it aside for a while and it will not be upset. You just pick up the book and continue from where you left off. You can have as many book friends as you like and your favorite book will not mind. This does not happen with real life friends. Try ignoring a friend for a while and see how jealous they become. Ending a relationship with a close friend can be really bad for you when your friend decides to turn on you and becomes your worst enemy.
You become easy target for him/her, because he/she knows your secrets and vulnerabilities. To add on that, books are nonjudgmental. With books you are confident in your own skin and you do not need to conform to anything. Books will not judge you based on your looks or fashion preferences. In fact, books encourage you to be yourself directly or indirectly. You may get several characters who fit your traits perfectly that they make you feel so good about yourself.
Books also improve your imagination. If you read books constantly, you will have a more advanced brain with higher propensity to imagination than people who do not read. Imagination is actually better than knowledge, because with imagination you are more innovative and creative.
This means that you will be more resourceful when it comes to problem solving. Also, books can help you improve your memory. In order to understand a book, you have to keep up with all the characters, plots, subplots and twists within the book until you finish it. Keeping all these information in your memory is actually a way of training your brain to retain more valuable information.
In addition, they give you a different view and perspective of various things on earth. For instance, a book can be written on Christianity and another one on Islam. By looking at both books, you are able to get an unbiased view of the two conflicting religions, which makes you appreciate both of them. With books, you are able to see through all the misconstrued ideas that are easily fed to the gullible masses with the intention of pitting one group against the other.
You will be more accommodative of other people’s cultures, attributes, ideas and points of view. In books, you see life through different characters and you are able to sympathize with them when they are faced with challenges. This actually improves your emotional quotient (EQ), which is the ability to notice when a person is going through some pain or difficulty, without them mentioning it. This may improve your relationship with people, because they feel like you know them and can easily feel the pain they are going through.
Books can also comfort you when you are depressed or feeling sick. They will keep you company when you are stuck in bed and entertain you when everyone else is keeping their distance, in order to avoid catching the flu. With a good book, you may laugh your way out of sickness, because laughter is the best medicine.
Furthermore, you can never be lonely or alone with a book in your hand. Isn’t it sad when someone says he feels lonely, even though he is surrounded by so many people? This can be attributed to the fact that they cannot capture his attention and stimulate his senses. Books on the other hand require that you concentrate all your senses to understand what is being talked about in them. They introduce you to many characters, who become part of your clique for the duration you spend reading the book.
Having a book by your side can help you locate a friend or even your soul mate. A book in hand is the easiest way of initiating a conversation. Someone will walk up to you and ask you what you are reading and you will reply the name, which will lead to the plot of the book and so on. Just having a book at all times will completely wade off all the fools, who may be tempted to take advantage of you and it will also attract like-minded individuals, who will not shy away from joining your book club.
As you can see, books always have our best interest at heart. Embracing a culture of reading is not as bad as most people are made to believe. In fact, books and success are two sides of the same coin. It is very rare to find a successful person who does not read on daily basis.
