Right now, I feel like if I had a magic lamp, I’ll make just one wish. I wish I could forget all of these reading stuff and be just like everyone else.
Spend hours in front of the TV. Play Facebook games all day. Watch all the viral YouTube videos everyone’s been laughing about. Have no problems walking inside a bookstore, completely oblivious to the great books on display. Or be just a normal guy with normal likes (sports, FHM) and dislikes (soap operas, Twilight).
Would life be easier for me, then? Maybe. I’ll probably spend more time with other people and less time alone by myself. I would not be going to bookstores unless I need to buy a pen. Surely, I would not be using the computer at this hour because I’ll be outdoors more often with more friends too. But then, that wouldn’t be the real me anymore. As much as I love dance music, I also love the quite peace of the night. And it would be really sad to miss out on great stories like Harry Potter, The Little Prince and A Sense of the World. Most likely, I wouldn’t even be able to write an article like this. I pretty much owe my vocabulary skills to the books I’ve read. So yeah, I think I would be less intelligent too.
So no, I’m taking back my wishes. (Haven’t rubbed the lamp yet.)
Here really are my 3 wishes for the genie:
- I wish there was more time for reading. A Time Turner would be really nice to have.
- I wish I had the money to buy all the books I want to read. Then I can also buy all the hardback, limited, anniversary, special and boxed editions of my favorite series. I’ll be able to share more books too!
- I wish more people would read. Then books will be talked about in public just as much as movies and celebrities. And as a bonus, I think the world will be a better place too.
Sorry if this seems to be just me ranting. I just felt I needed to write this out because I’m experiencing yet another one of those moments when I’m just disappointed of who I am as a person. Being too different especially for a guy really has a lot of social and psychological disadvantages, in my opinion. I just need to remind myself (again) that I should thank God for He gave me the gift of love for reading.
If you can think of other positive things one can get for reading a lot, especially for guys, please share it below. God knows I need all the encouragement I can get right now.
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i didn’t expect you to be a guy at all! i saw your URL and I thought you’re a Syaoran fangirl…
You’re the third guy person who I’ve encountered who reads a lot, the other two are my father and my late lolo! haha! nice post!
Wow. This post is old but brings back a lot of memories. Like, what was I thinking?
And make that a Syaoran fanboy. Haha!
I have so many things to say about this topic and forgive me. I think your actions about the three wishes rubbed the lamp. The genie begins answering back and considers time because we belong to the real world. The genie is you-in-the-real-world and the surface of the lamp is the light bulb, that very thought of what you desire. When you think and post, you’re rubbing the lamp. Things starts to happen, but it needs participation, faith and humor. I believe you can now begin to chunk down the three wishes into small bites and start asking questions as you do it: How can I have more time for reading? What are the steps and the trade-offs? How can I have the money to buy books? What are the alternatives? How can I effectively lead people to read? The more you think about them, the more discomfort with excitement and pleasure begin, and that’s what most athletes feel, because you are unbalancing an existing equilibrium and beginning a revolution which will finally set a new level of equilibrium. Massive change happens in the world, it begins in thought…it begins in you.
I would like to recommend other books, this time on General Semantics (this field is different from semantics which is a sub-field of linguistics). It also helped me a lot by changing my beliefs about how I make sense about the world. We can trace our behavior, whether shyness or confidence or fear to attempt new things, to beliefs (or rules) we have consciously or unconsciously. Once we learned about it it losses its power to control our behavior without our permission because by then we start to realize our choices and pick those that we think useful to us. I remember that quote from the Buddha: “All that we are is the result of what we have thought”. General semantics influences language and logic which currently follow Aristotle’s tradition. For example, when one says “I am shy” shyness becomes a fixed attribute influencing identity. Instead of thinking “I am shy” one can use the alternative “I feel shy” and thus he can think of “How can I feel more confident then?” or maybe by a leap of thought one may think of “What similarities I can find between a book and the world outside?” I never become shy to a book, what if I see the world or each person or group as a different sort of books? A book has organization…and the world has organization, and each person’s lives has organization too. I become ready to commit mistakes of interpretations about a book…why not also in a relationship when I can make it better in the end? It becomes exciting in a way.
From General Semantics, I recommend Science and Sanity by Afred Korzybski and Language in Thought and Action by SI Hayakawa.
One idea I learned from reading books came from Carol Dweck in her book Mindset (and from Josh Waitzkin’s The Art of Learning…his book relates to Dweck’s). This idea describes a way of thinking that intuitively believes in growth and development and she called it the ‘growth mindset’. For example, ok, I observe that I feel shy but an equally strong belief also exist in me suggesting that I can develop confidence. Well of course I cannot have it right now, but in time bit by bit by doing something, I can have that confidence. The idea points to incremental improvements one can gain by making an effort to work on the condition of shyness towards confidence. We learned about growth in childhood though unconsciously, because all of us learned to walk by trying much and with pain. We bumped to standing objects near us, we fell and we cried, but we instinctively continue despite the obstacles, the pain, and the ‘mistakes’ (we didn’t even know we commit mistakes). However as we grow older we become acquainted with constraints or rules restricting our actions…we cannot do this and we cannot do that because this and this… and that and that..and so on, at the expense of the drive coming from sense of curiosity,adventure and innocence that propelled our early learnings. What needs to be done towards a more confident self? It will depend on our instincts, our determination to gather information, our drive to act and our willingness to ignore the rules that stops us and to risk. Yes, it seems that when one starts feeling comfortable with mistakes, exploring and experimenting, he begins to find the truth about the world and this contributes to his learning.
Some questions I encountered from books on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) may also provide an insight on how one may proceed to develop desired ends: 1. What do you want specifically? (confidence, strength, and so on) 2. Why do you want it? 3. What actions you should take? When? 4. What stops you from achieving it? (this question especially uncovers the hidden rules that stops you) 5. What alternative actions you should take to continue?
I recommend reading Carol Dweck’s Mindset, better and simpler than neuro-linguistic programming when it comes to personal growth and development. NLP however can give precision towards achieving goals. One can have training in NLP in the Philippines at Mind Pool, Inc. http://yoglam.webs.com/.
Welcome back Angelo!
Thanks for the insightful comments and for the book recommendations. I am now reading Mindset on the Kindle and it looks like a very promising read.
Your writing begs me to ask this question: Are you a psychologist or something of that sort? If I hadn’t pursued a career in computers, that’s the path I would have most likely taken.
Hm… no reply (yet) from Angelo. But if anyone’s interested, the book we’ve talked about in this comment thread (Mindset) is included in my 2010 life lessons series at my personal blog.
http://www.syaoran.net/blog/2011/04/5-lessons-in-2010-2-growth-mindset/
you’re sounding like a melancholic introvert person…. aren’t you? hehe, if thats the case there’s a book entitled The Introvert Advantage: how to thrive in an Extrovert World by Marti Laney, had my gaze on that book at fully booked, i bet its helpful….. anyway… just want to comment about the little prince that you set as an example, i’ve read it like five times already and still counting. that book is simply the best philosophical children’s classic EVER…..
*just discovered this site and had a great time browsing over your blog.
Thanks bookworm! I already downloaded The Introvert Advantage and it seems I would really enjoy reading this.
I have only read The Little Prince once and that was only two years ago. Yeah, I was late in discovering this gem. But it’s probably true what they say… that you can read this book at different times in your life and you’d always discover something new on it. People would interpret things on it differently and can be profoundly affected by it which makes “Prince” a really great classic book.
Sometimes I also wished that I never loved reading books.
It’s my first time to meet someone like me. Until now, I can’t help but wish I can be a NORMAL guy who likes NORMAL things. But no matter what I do, sports doesn’t really seem to fit me.
I like who I am but it just seem unfair when people do not understand me at all. I hate how judgmental and stereotypical this world is…Answer me, what is wrong when a guy reads?
Nothing. It’s perfectly okay for a guy to read. It’s been two months since I wrote this post and let me tell you that now I’m more than ever thankful that I’m not what you’d call a NORMAL guy. We just don’t fit the stereotypes about guys. We’re in the minority and that makes us a rarity. I figured that makes us appear prodigious to the opposite sex. And I guess that explains the previous commenter’s sexy remark. Haha!
guys who read a lot are sexy…
Thanks! That’s all I wanted to hear. I can now close the comments for this article.
(Haha! Just kidding…)
Hi, Patrick! I wish for those three things as well! However, I came to a sad decision that (a) I will never have enough money to buy all the books that I want and (b) I will never have enough time to read all the books out there. But as for the wish to get more people to read, well I guess that’s why we’re here. We bloggers promote the love for reading, right?
We do! That’s one of the things I never really thought of when I started this book blog. I just thought it would be a place where I write my thoughts on the books I read. But when you think about it, book blogs can give the best kind of marketing books can get these days.
empathize…. i read books like a breathe air.. there’s never enough time to read.. and really never enough money for books…
We’ll never have enough of anything in this world. Human nature I guess. But when it comes to books, I just can’t seem to accept that fact with composure.
We share almost the same wishes. Especially the one about having more money to buy all the books we want!
Don’t we all?
You should join Flips Flipping Pages. You’d fit right in!
Haha! I feel so bad now. You guys keep on getting me into FFP but I haven’t gotten the guts yet to join you there. I just feel so… undeserving.
I wish for the 3rd also.
For guys who really read, they make sense. There would be a common ground for you and another reader, too. There wouldn’t be a dead, stale air of boredom if you know something about literary works or the like. If you can just imagine how many people are aching to have an intellectual conversation with another regardless of gender.
If you read, you may be:
1. More brilliant at conversations, assuming you aren’t that shy
2. Sexier to women who rate men with a lot more to say, high in their list
3. Less of a square when it comes to new ideas
1. I am shy. Need to take care of that first then.
But I think I talk too much. Women don’t like that, I think… -_-;
2. Awesome!
3. Haha! Bit related to the last one. I have a lot of ideas but I tend to just talk and talk which only annoys my team mates.
But thanks Jo! I didn’t think of those points before.