It is a Friday. A cold Friday, or so I think. If it is not,
I am probably harboring some unwanted bacteria and viruses which are making me
feel funny today. Nevertheless, I dragged myself to work for a number of
reasons and having found a bit of a breather, I have found myself writing this
post. Again, for a number of reasons.
In recent days and weeks, I almost made a resolution to
abandon this blog and stop writing because I felt like it was hardly of any
benefit. The readership has dropped drastically from the peak of over 150 views
per article to a very miserable number I will not mention. If you have been
reading, you would understand that a drop in the number of hits on an article
is not enough to keep my fingers on the keypad considering how busy my brain
can get at the end of the week. That brings us to the actual reason I wanted to
do this. I have always used the blog as a hole in my brain; a vent through which
thoughts, toxic and “non-toxic” alike would go through, nourishing others with
wisdom on a rare occasion. Venting out my frustrations and sorrows through
writing used to feel good, but of late I have lost the urge to do the same.
I spent the last two weeks in which I was absent from the
scene thinking of writing an article aimed at disseminating the results of my
abandoned social experiment. I however did not write it because I felt like I
had not built up enough anger that would make the words come out in the best of
arrangements. After a bit of introspection, I realized that the reason the
anger did not come in was that it was not necessary in the first place. There
we go, then. The results of the abandoned social experiment will never go to the
masses and that will be three weeks of research wasted. That is not important,
but the main point is just that I have lost the urge to vent. For a number of
reasons.
The place I work in has a health and safety team that
advises us on a number of issues that range from how to sneeze in the cold
weather to how to extinguish a fire. My favorite from them is the advice on how
we should not remain seated on the desk for too long, and how we should walk
about in the office space in what they call health breaks. Naturally, I am the
kind of person that can hardly remain seated in one place for more than an
hour. Luckily, I am a Catholic and our mass service provides a bit of room for
standing and kneeling which means I do not have to sit still through all the
three hours of a high mass. At work, health breaks mean I can disturb a bunch
of friends. On one of those episodes, last week something caught my attention
when I visited a friend’s desk. He has a book with a title that suggested that
we are what we read. Now that was something, because someone suggested that we
are what we eat in those years. I am thinking that the contexts of these might
be different, so I will let it slide and focus on humans being what they read.
I have always been a fan of reading. This, I think was sparked
by the opening of a library at our primary school back in 2002. Now, this was
not your typical urban primary school. This was a pure rural school that people
liked to call Kapeya after the village in which it was built. Having a library
there was pretty exciting and I began to read books on a whole lot of different
topics; human geography books that described the lives of Eskimos in detail and
the growing of rubber in Malaysia, fictional books, science books, life skills
and pretty much anything people have been insane enough to put into a book.
Just not poetry, though.
My reading culture continued when I crossed over to St
Patrick’s, Mzedi. The place had a library which was stocked with books from old
curricula along with a load of magazines and other books that had little if
anything to do with school. In those days, they used to allocate periods for
library reading on the time table and that was our time to enjoy the comic
series “Tales from the Trigan Empire” from the nicely bound “Look and Learn”
Magazines. Useless things, but we enjoyed them, anyway. And then we had the stories
from the Step Ahead English language books that we had. By the time I was in my
third term I had finished reading all the stories in all the books in the
series. The other reads on the menu were the magazines from what we called the
Chaplain’s library, a small library full of religious material (ironically one
Harry Chikasamba was librarian in this one; if you know him, you know). Point?
I continued to read widely in secondary school.
The reading culture was thrown under the bus when I joined
the medical school. There the only non-academic thing I allowed myself to read
was a text from my girlfriend but otherwise it was all anatomy, physiology, medicine,
proctology, ophthalmology and things of that sort. But then college went and
once again I was at it.
Having known a lot of people who were sitting under
motivational speakers or were motivational speakers themselves, I had a lot of “good
books” pass through my recommendation basket. I managed to read through a few
of them and I liked the idea of reading about personal goal setting and
financial planning. Guess what I liked more? Watching a movie and then going on
to read a 300-page book about it. Over the years post-graduation, I have read a
few books many of which have little to do with my work in clinical research and
I think that is what makes reading fun. It reminds me of how I, at some point
found myself reading about the murder at Sarajevo when I had a French exam on
the next day and history wasn’t part of my subject list. I can be that careless
with what I read.
My current research job demands that I stay up to date by
reading the latest in the world of research. I have no issues with that and I
pick up papers on what I could call a good interval. On the other hand, I find
myself enjoying reading the Donald Trump Presidential Twitter Library (by Trevor
Noah) or the World According to Clarkson. That sort of material can be
captivating to read, if you know what I mean. That bring me to the other reason
I read that widely. One person once mentioned that a person who never reads
loses his ability to write and I think that is a vital point. I need to write
so I need to read.
I was talking about how I wanted to drop this article of feeding
a few readers with articles. Well. I got three reminders from people who were
very eager to read what was going on through my mind today. They probably
thought I was going to write about Suleiman or Mtambo, but those issues are too
topical for me. I may not like to vent anymore, but I sure like to keep my writings
more personal than topical. Here I am, writing article that will probably add
no value to the two ladies and one gentleman who pestered me for it.
My ladies, my lord. You are what you read. Is this article
worth it? Were your hostile text messages worth it?
All in all, the last thing I could say is that we all need to develop a reading culture. And if the "you are what you read" statement is anything to go by, you need to choose your books wisely... and follow this link.
Have a Cypress weekend, everyone.
