That nobody told me yet..

When I am busy, my days rush like Olympic sprinters and I go with the flow: fast, faster, fastest. I love chasing time. Then just like all sprinters and marathon-achievers I feel tired after that long race. I slow down and seek peace.

Last week, there was a day when I felt lost and tired. So, my husband suggested that I go to library.

It’s quite quaint how every human being acts differently in similar situations. My mom and my husband find peace in temples, while praying in front of God. My dad finds peace in stories and news articles on old newspapers that he missed reading due to his busy schedule; with a cup of tea, he enjoys quiet moment.

I find peace in a library; sitting around words, touching them, smelling them and obviously reading them.

It’s strange that nobody will tell you where you will find peace. It’s your own search and your very own truth.

In a world where everything changes so rapidly every day, every new thing becomes old and futile, I am glad that my library stays the same, just the way I saw it for the first time: venerable, timeless and so important in my life.

This time, after almost 4 months I visited the same old place of my other love, books.

I went through every aisle and corner of the library to check book covers that could draw my attention. I am not a “judge a book by its cover” kind of person. But this time, I took the different route. There is a place for erotic fictions and thrillers and that place is almost always crowded. I avoid that place all the time as I do not prefer that genre. But this time, I started my book-search from that corner and through the classics, contemporary fictions, non-fictions, technology, management books I ended my journey at the poetry section. I found torn, over-read books by famous writers, I found almost new and untouched books by not so famous writers.

So what did I notice that I missed all this while?

 –  that every cover talks about a promise; a promise made to you by illustrations and words that you’ll love and believe in the story, the poem, the anecdote, the erotica, the diet plan, the perspective of an author who cared to share a slice of his/her life with you.

 – that so many authors talked about the same subject, but only a few them were loved and others could not strike a chord with the readers.

 – that most successful books are all about how differently the author used words to tell his tale and remained convincing.

This is true when two authors talk about the same subject. And it’s pretty true in blogging too, the way we see successful bloggers and accept their story-telling.

But there is another side of reading that I recently thought. Is there something fresh and new still available that no books offered me till now? Is there a new story, a new wisdom, new situation, a new thriller and a new tale of eternal love that nobody told me yet? I haven’t been able to read all the books of this world, even though I am multilingual and a bookworm.

This time,I noted down a few points that nobody told me in books that I read:

• We are made of experiences and memories.They configure our present and future.
• Success and failure are momentary. Life is made of so many seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months and years. One success is not enough. One failure is the least important part of life.
• No matter how much we try, we will get hurt, we will see bad days and even bad hair days, days of pimples, headaches. So accepting the unknown inevitable is the key to happiness.
• We can control our own actions and emotions. There are self-help books, parent’s lessons, own wisdom and learning to take care of that part. We cannot control others. And there is no relevant how-to book for that. So, maybe we should not worry about that part of life.

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Do you search for a topic that you haven’t read till now? What genre do you love reading? Do you love libraries in the age of internet and quick fixes?

Author: Archita

Musings about life and photography. View all posts by Archita