Life, Laughter and Everything Else

"Why do your read?" It was a perfectly innocent question and it took me aback for a while. If she had asked "Why read?", I could have given a plethora of answers, from the many 'xx Reasons why you should read articles there was never any shortage of online. It improves your concentration. Your vocabulary gets better. It makes you more empathetic. But were they the reasons I read? Not really. Yes I believed that reading probably had those benefits and I also believed I had gained superior intelligence and skills of language, refinement and empathy that was unmatched by the vast majority of the people around me whose skills were degraded by the countless hours spent watching videos on their smartphones ( I did never admit to reading making me more humble). O, that might be a bit far fetched but there was certainly a pleasurable sense of 'I am different from the technology controlled masses' that I derived from reading books. But was that it? ...

There is mysterious comfort in the written word. They emerge slowly and meticulously and like a painting, they visualize and they clarify, giving shape to the thoughts one usually repeats endlessly in the mind at lightning speed. Where the enemy can be seen, he can be fought. The words themselves are the weapons. However, they do not hurt the enemy, instead they allow you to stab deep into the recesses of your mind and your heart. There they find the torrent of emotion and thoughts within; the fear, the pain, the sadness. The words question the enemy and with each question comes an answer and with each answer comes another question. The words dig deeper and deeper and so reveals he truth. And the truth, if true, comforts.

I despised people who are always staring at their smartphones or smart devices. It was them I saw when I boarded the train to work every morning and them I saw again when I exited the train, those lifeless faces lost in the virtual world they had chosen to replace the present with. It is as if what there was in front of them was not enough, that they were not ready to adjust to the world around them, but instead the world they had to adjust to their tastes. I despised them because they to me resembled the roboticized populations of the future, who moved from day to day without opening their eyes to the world around them, the people around them. As conversations dried up, relationships became more hi-bye and friends too busy, the smartphone, to me, was Lucifer, the one who pulled the strings in a world that seemed to more and more lose touch with its humanity. As such I turned to books. While everyone had their head bent over a LED screen, I chose to turn to the single item that onc...

At last Philip said:  “Well, I can’t say anything about other people.  I can only speak for myself.  The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can’t get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion.  But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions.  Before I do anything I feel that I have choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe that it was inevitable from all eternity.” “What do you deduce from that?” asked Hayward. “Why, merely the futility of regret.  It’s no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.” -Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham Once in a blue moon, life brings a quotation or epiphany to light that altogether changes one's perspective of something. Elizabeth Taylor's 'Nothing lasts. Did you notice that?', was one that reduced the exaggerated importance of the to-do list that society i...

radio: . . . garrison already decimated by the Vietcong, who lost 115 of their men . . . woman: It’s awful, isn’t it, it’s so anonymous. man: What is? woman: They say 115 guerillas, yet it doesn’t mean anything, because we don’t know anything about these men, who they are, whether they love a woman, or have children, if they prefer the cinema to the theatre. We know nothing. They just say . . . 115 dead.                                                                                              —Jean-Luc Godard, Pierrot le Fou It was like any other postcard, brief and handwritten briskly. It described something that had caught the writer's eye, something that had reminded her of her childhood, something that she wanted to share with someone who was...