A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.
– George R. R. Martin, American novelist and short-story writer
ALL I ever wanted to do when I was a little girl was to read storybooks. I did not need much – just my books. When I got sick, which I always did with my asthma and bronchitis or allergies, I would get a book from my parents to help me keep my mind off my state of misery.
I would devour the book with relish and forget about the fact that other kids were participating in games and events running around in the rain or just attending school and learning stuff while I was left so far behind life as I knew it, coughing and lying in bed.
There were books on dragons, elves, faraway lands and magic and I would get transported into those worlds and be a myriad of characters living a myriad of lives having a thousand possibilities. Do you know what is said about a million alternate parallel universes existing all at the same time?
I think books are those gateways into those million parallel universes, with different characters, different exotic places where the story’s multiple plots unravel … and you are in all of them as central characters.
For most of primary school, I never took school seriously because I would pass all my exams without studying. Books had taught me enough English and basic knowledge to pass exams with flying colours.
It was maths that was my downfall. An 11-year-old me realised I could not use books to get me to pass maths exams where they asked me about advanced divisions and square roots. No book had taught me that, though they had taught me how life began and evolved in North America through the book Centennial, how feudal systems operated in Japan during the time of the Samurai in Shogun, how the Jews were persecuted in Europe and the land was carved out of another land after World War 2 so that they could have a country of their own in Exodus. These were thousand-page books each and the 11-year-old me knew them all but not square roots, so she almost failed her maths paper.
Having always been so easily at the top of the class, it was a shocker to realise I had to from now on study stuff to be able to pass my exam.
So, after a lot of tears and feeling depressed, I buckled up and studied like never before with maths, geography, history, and science and made it back to being top five of the class again. Back then there was no indoctrination by the medical industry and education system to teach kids that they were fragile beings where all ups and downs in life and hard work would adversely affect their ‘mental health’ and so I was spared trips to the psychiatrist for crying nonstop for weeks and feeling very down.
My mom just sat with me and forced me to study properly and I started scoring again. My happiness index picked up and I became competitive and resourceful and learnt that I could overcome any downside in my life by staring a problem in the eye and fixing it, without needing prescription pills.
Ah, the 80’s kids were a lucky lot.
We had real raw music that was not controlled by the music industry, we ate non-GMO food because Bill Gates was just a nerd then who had not become a megalomaniac that controlled the food industry introducing GMO in all food we grow, boys were boys and girls were girls and kids were not taught sex in kindergartens and told that they could choose their genders and go for expensive reconstructive surgeries that the medical industry could profit from it, prices of everything was so affordable that my father on his clerk income could afford to send his four children to universities, while my mother stayed at home and took care of us. We could even afford to feed the dog and own a house and car.
Have you ever wondered why the prices of everything have gone up over the years? Nothing just goes up on its own, you know. The world remains the same in its abundance but human beings in their little world are forced to pay more and more for less and less. It’s a forced scarcity by the people in charge while the mainstream media tell us otherwise.
I perhaps can see with more clarity on this because I don’t get all my information from Google. Once upon a time, I got my source of information from books by diverse authors, each giving their version of how they see the world, and that has formed my thinking and my perception that I can question everything. Books tend to do that to you.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune. Feedback can reach the writer at beatrice@ibrasiagroup.com
