My Reading Journey Took Me to Other Realizations

For as long as I know, I love reading anything since I was a kid but never managed to read stacked books since then. Until the pandemic hit, I drew myself into reading again.

Reading is a boring activity to do for some people. Particularly among kids, reading is always related to studying and kids do not really into that. A research published by the National Literacy Trust for World Book Day 2019 said that children today read less frequently and enjoy reading less than the young people did in the past. Only 16% of children under 18s spent some time each day to read. As a kid I didn’t really know what made me stumble into reading. As far as I remember, I was just learning to read when I was in Kindy and it brought me to read everything I could find. To be honest, it was and still is the learning and knowing something new that reading really attracts me even more.

Sad to say that books wasn’t really my main course in reading. It was so hard for me to get my parents’ permission to buy books and I assumed it was because of financial problem or literally my parents’ conventional life. So, I just read my sisters’ books, newspapers, my friend’s magazines, and social science books from school (this might be the reason I fell in love with studying or learning science in general lol). Until I was in middle school and joined the Olympiad team, reading was something that I had to do, and didn’t feel any contentment from it. Maybe it was because of the pressure of representing my school in National Science Olympiad (I got bronze medal in National level though, so I guess it was worth the struggle). Again, in my high school years, I was even more busy (or making myself look busy lol), I competed in National Science Olympiad (again), National and ASEAN Science Project Olympiad, and joined the school student representatives. All those years I only had little time to read not for those things and I kind of feel sad about that.

But in those little time, I finally got myself a new escape from the school life. I preferred self-improvement books and was never into novels (fiction or non-fiction) while all my friends were scrambling over national bestseller novels until someday the school library just bought bunch of English novels and I read the legendary novel When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. Right at that moment I knew what genre I love and what really was my comfort books. Since then, I would love to read novels but sadly still had little time for serenity.

It was until college I finally managed to put my reading time in my schedule among academics and organizations. But my go to genre was still self-help/self-improvement books. On my freshmen year I finished only three books and I was not happy about that. Until the pandemic hit, I tried to read novels again and it was The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner. Since then, I have read ten novels in just six months. I mean, it was a big progress from my freshmen year.

As the reading journey continues, it becomes more personal or even intimate for me. Reading, novels particularly, made me realize few things about myself. I was reading a book and often found myself think “what or how would I feel and react if I experience things that the characters have in the book?” To be frank, I often reflect on myself during empty hours, but I rarely learn something about myself, but this other way, by reading novels I feel like finally there is somebody (let’s say book is considered a person since it was written by somebody) who can understand me and help me put what I feel into words.

From now on, I love to read sad tear-jerking books and science but not so science books like Your Brain, Explained by the popular neuroscientist and youtuber, Marc Dingman.

As I stated earlier that reading attracts me because I love to learn and know something new about anything. It’s true and at this moment it happens to be learning about my own complicated self even though I learn everything else from my readings this year. Now that I understand myself better, I could say that maybe in six or seven months I would prefer another genre than my current favorites. Simply because I’m growing and keep searching for more.

I realized that we, human, need something other than themselves to learn their own complicated self and complex life. We need something that simplify the bigger things that are in our tiny body and short life despite how mesmerizing and complex anatomy of our body, but we simply can’t comprehend it. I got something related to this from my current reading which happens to be Midnight Library by Matt Haig and it is said,

And so this I tell you the simplification of my reading journey that took me to self and life realization.

Let’s be friends on goodreads! Search me by Harum Kurnia Jayanti.

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