the art of reading

Since my earliest youth, when it was the time of Ma meeting friends or being out to shopping mall, she would always let me wandering myself around bookstore. And most of the times, she would let me pick one book for my collection. Sometimes, it could be a story book. Sometimes, it could be a graphic dictionary. Thus, I may say books have always been something I 'favourite' since kid. Prolly because Barbie as my another wants was too pricey and we couldn't afford buying one that time. However, I am glad Ma has taught me to read since I was very young at age. 

As I grow up, my surrounding has then built my reading material. I learnt to choose what to read. Of what kind of things I want to know, and what is the best book that would provide me materials I want. From something as fantasy as The Red Riding Hood to something as intense as Mein Kampf, reading sure has taught me a lot about living. And among those people that surround me since I was very young, I guess the eldest Dibby is the one that has contributed a lot to the type of book I read today. 

Reading, to me, is rather called an art. For every book provide a stack of materials one could possess as skills in life. Though I might have read thousands of books, I still wouldn't call myself as a well-read person. It is the one who possess the art of reading and actually uses it can be called as a well-read person. 

By the art of reading, I actually mean something different. It doesn't mean the average reading of typical average people do in normal basis. It is, to be sure, a way of reading throughly and questioning. Of by 'why this and that', making a person insists to know more, subsequently to know deeper and wider. Reading; as the process of obtaining materials shall be organized in one's mind. One can read thousands or even millions of books but rather could not understand the concept being applied to real life basis. They lack of obtaining the true value of material they acquire thus then would make the invaluable input not be retained forever.   

Reading, on the other hand, should have purposes and meanings. One should read not just because the demand of society for him to be called 'intelligentsia' but rather for the nature of him as human being to know better. To be skilled. To be wise. To be independent thinker; who possibly could think big think and not just be left out in a specific parliament. 

As what Hitler has put it into words; we shall bolster up reality by theory and test theory by reality. 

You may read something you want to know, or you may read something you never insisted to know that it then be a bonus you learn something new. And likewise, the art of telling us that we actually were an idiot for not knowing. I guess, it is quite irony, to let us think that we are actually a lifetime idiot so that we could be intellectually humble to know things right at the very most right; not pessimistically limited to our own self-created ideology. 

We read to forget, 

And we forget to keep going.