Principles – “The Avid Reader” – 14/11/2015

   “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”, Mark Twain, the American Writer. Travel shows you other dimensions of life and gives it more depth. You meet different persons and get in touch with different ideas. Thus, you will see life with a different perspective.

   You can travel in time too while taking a journey in a book. As they say, “Travel begins with a book” and “When you read a book, you listen to another voice of someone may be died since ages. As reading is journey across time“. During your journey inside a book, you open your mind, heart and soul to new horizons in which you see the old past that you didn’t live, the present of the world around and the future in others’ perspectives, hopes and dreams.

   The journey may lead you to a place you can see all its details in your mind’s eye. You may also learn other habits and traditions that you never heard about before or understand other people’s cultures and they become part of yours.

   When you begin wandering in a book, you will discover the true meaning of life; learn wisdom and experience from life stories of people managed to get over their obstacles. Thus you will enhance your perspectives and perseverance. No one didn’t learn from the stories of great people who achieved victory over the obstacles they met to achieve their noble goals that helped humanity. There is no one who didn’t learn from the life of those whom the world considered miserable yet they have never surrendered to their miserable circumstances like the miraculous, Helen Keller. Someone once said “I have never gone through an affliction that didn’t abate after an hour of reading.” Through reading, you will escape from sadness and feel better, thus you would be able to think quietly of your problems and try to solve them in a balanced and positive way.

   Your journey in a book is a cultural journey. As the great writer, Naguib Mahfouz says, “A literate person is educated person while a reader is a cultured person.” As culture is the first step to progress and development of the nation and the person himself as it adds to his skills and helps him to be unique and creative. It was said “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a civilization; all you need to do is to make people stop reading.” Civilization is the evidence of nations’ progress.

   Thinkers, philosophers and scholars give great importance to reading. No matter how busy you are, you should find time to reading and if you don’t, then you would be willingly giving yourself up to ignorance. Keep some time for reading and let it open more horizons before you in life.

Anba Ermiah

General Bishop& President of the Coptic Orthodox Cultural Center