the last bookworm

The more I read, the more I know that I have not learnt so much.

You coined me bookworm just because I like to do reading?  Have you googled what a bookworm really is?  Or just because none of the people in your family (other than me) do reading or have the habit of reading therefore you think I am the odd?  Come on young man, look beyond your walls.  Look far and think deep, reading is just a culture you have not learnt about (which you should have but unfortunately you have not).

If you care to understand, or if you are keen enough to notice what I have been reading, or if you bother to glance through the collection of books I am reading, you would know that I am not reading academic books as what the traditional bookworms have been doing.  I do voluntary readings and I have no exams to sit for my readings.

Well, I was not born smart like Leonardo Da Vinci nor have the brain like Albert Einstein.  I was unfortunately (I guess I am having tons of bad deeds from the past lives) born to a timid family with inferior parents who literally confined my childhood and teenhood to virtually zero exposure to the outside world beyond the forsaken bush where our father built the illegal shelters (I refuse to call those abodes houses because they were not eligible as house for humanity standard).

You may notice that I used plural shelters instead of singular shelter.  That is because there were all together three (3) illegal shelters being built. Except for the first one, each was built after the previous one had been destroyed by very strong wind.  By the way, the first one was built after we were chased out of grandpa’s house when I was barely six year old.  If DBKK (back then was called MPKK) had not demolished the last one, I guess our parents would still be squatting in the bush, and there would not be just three (3) shelters in the family history.

The flimsy wooden shelters were without any modern, or I should say basic utilities such as government water supply, electricity, telephone, sanitary plumbing, refrigerator, gas stove, mail box, municipal garbage collection or even asphalt sealed access road, which means we have very limited mobility.  The situation was inhumane in today’s term.  Therefore we had virtually no neighbor.  That was understandable; no sane modern human would want to live in such extreme deprivation.  We were physically and socially isolated from the outside world.  Having inferior parents exacerbated our isolation.  Our father was hardly at home while our mother was barely out home.  Except for school hours, our lives were confined to the bush.  Our humble abodes hardly had visitor.   Who would bother to visit such barren place and its boring inhabitants? A place so inconveniently access physically, we had life no different from hermits in the mountains.

With limited mobility and social communication breakdown, I had very little idea of the world outside the bush.  I was not informed of the wide range of peoples, things or events happening outside the bush.  Our parents never bother to expose us to the outside world.  Father was hardly home.   If he happened to be home he did not bother to talk to us.  Mother was strangely inferior to the extend I suspect my sociopath syndromes was due to her.  There was virtually no intellectual conversation within family members.  There was no exposure to medias other than academic books.  There was no casual visit to book stores or libraries.  There was no one around to instil knowledge beyond academic readings.

I remember my first casual visit to Easton, it was after Form Five.  I was so shocked and overwhelmed to see wide range of books in display, and deeply regretted for having missed out so much all these while. However back then, there was the issue of money; I had no budget for none academic books.

Now that I have my own money, I bought books captured my interest whenever I visited book stores. I started to build up my own library. I have turned from a fervent reader into a book collector.

Why do I bother reading so much?  Psychologically, I found refuge in reading.  Intellectually, readings widen my knowledge; readings inspired me, readings connect and relate me to the world outside.  Physiologically, I am merely making full use of reading potentials, which only human has.  Since we have very limited life span as compared to the infinite eons the universe has, that we could only experience so much in a life time, thus many other experiences we missed out could then be substitute with readings.

Of course I do watch TV documentaries and movies.  I went to colleges and universities as many times as I could.  I was even coined certificates collector.  But that could only do so much.

The keywords here are lifelong learning and new experience.  All things evolve with time for betterment. Human being would always in search of new experience.  Readings equip us with wide range of learnings and experiences.  Reading nourishes our mind and enforces our mentality.  We could have strong minds which would then benefit the conduct of our lives.  The ultimate independent could be achieved when a person is mentally independent.

Personally, I have learnt so much from readings.  Readings provide me with knowledge and confidence that I am not afraid of being different or not accepted by the status quo.

Let’s leave the technical part and explore the spiritual side of readings and learning.  Do you know why some people were born smart or having different talents?  And why some people were born prodigies?  Why was Da Vinci multi-talented?  Why Einstein had such brilliant brain?  It is said that these people had been acquiring the same skills through many past lives.  In other words, it says our talents or intellects are not acquired just in one life time, indeed talents are the result of many lives efforts, talents are accumulated skills.  The prodigies that you see in the medias are very old souls who had been learning hard all their past lives.

Every single thing I know is the result of my hard earned effort.  I didn't have the luxury of being spoon-feed.  I hope that justifies why I never stop reading and learning.  I am just making good use of the limited time I have in a life time.