Quirkbag Collection #51 – 19.07.26
It was June 2024. I was sitting outside the doctor’s consultation room waiting for my turn at the polyclinic. I held in my hand a copy of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” which I had just borrowed 15 minutes earlier.
Out of curiosity, I read the first page. Then the second, and the next one. When it was my turn, I was almost one chapter in.
I caught myself by surprise as I hated reading books. It was a feeling aggravated by the insistence of teachers/educators to read. How could I have read the first few pages of “Rich Dad Poor Dad” without “forcing” myself? And how is it possible that I felt okay reading it?
Until then, every piece of text I read was “forced”. It was torture. I willed myself to read anything and it was ultimately for studying. Leisure reading was a concept far from familiar back then. But that day, I read more and more pages of the book and in a few days, I had finished the iconic book by Robert Kiyosaki.
From then on, I hit the library weekly and read almost one book a week for slightly less than 1 year. I could not believe it.
Starting A New Chapter
So how could I have taken a liking to reading suddenly? Simply put, I found a selfish reason to read.
In the army, I encountered the ideas of investing and personal finance, so I wanted to learn what they were about. Enter “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. Like a door that led me down a long corridor filled with more doors, one book led me to the next. The rest is history. I moved into a new chapter of life where reading is no longer an anathema.
It started because curiosity about one out-of-school-syllabus topic in the right environment led me to lightly pursue it. Then I fell into the rabbit hole of reading.
But it was not always like this, and so it could not have happened earlier.
In all my student life, I hated reading, and any piece of text longer than one paragraph, because I had to spend effort reading. No article or passage was interesting because everything had to serve a purpose: help me study (mostly GP in particular).
I was not interested at all, had no desire or curiosity because I hated the idea of reading. I hated having to understand what some obscure author had to say about some issue I cannot be bothered to discuss.
“Why do I care what they think when I have a 2-hour exam to take?”
I had all the wrong reasons to read, and none to continue reading.
Purpose Matters
All this to say, purpose matters when it comes to reading. It cannot be forced for the sake of it no matter how well-intentioned we are. Purpose matters when reading, especially to those growing up without an interest in books. Push (“push” might mean “force”) them into reading and, like me, they might just hate it altogether at the end.
Growing up, the habit of reading was nurtured by nagging some variation of “read the news”. Of course, teachers used encouraging tones but any 12 year-old fed up with “reading” (like me) would describe it that way.
I mean, the best some kid could do was maybe Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Not even that interested me then. And still, sometimes you could feel parents’ minor dissatisfaction because they should “be informed of the news”. Just look around today, how many (young) adults really read the news (and no, that 30s clip on Tiktok does not count)?
Regardless of how well-intentioned we are, we never think in the shoes of the kid/student. We always think in our own perspectives. Why should they feel differently than we did at the same age?
So I like to think that the adage “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink” applies to reading. You really can’t force a child/student to read without some unintended but well-deserved “horsekick to the chest”.
Suppose they did read, they probably would not enjoy reading nor would they do so for its intrinsic value. So really, was it successful?
A Sight-Seeing Voyage From Your Comfort Zone
What of its intrinsic value then? Surely reading is beneficial to all of us and we should all want to read. Indeed it is, but only when we do it for the right reason. Dare I say, there is only one right reason – because we want to.
Ever since I read one book a week, I have seen (fractions of) the world all from the comfort of my chair/bed. From personal finance, productivity, lifestyle to psychology, philosophy and business, the books gave me a taste of it all and how big the world really is.
There are more books than one can ever finish reading. Similarly, there are more experiences in life than one can actually have. So if reading is like sitting in a train on an endless sight-seeing voyage, you, the reader/traveller, can choose what you want to see for as long as you want.
A Glimpse Of Time Travel
The benefits of reading are well established. But less so the experience of it.
I continued my sight-seeing voyage with books after “Rich Dad Poor Dad” because the sheer possibilities offered by books was almost too good to pass on. It was the compiled learning, experience, insights and feelings of people who have dabbled in their field, all given away for free in the library.
It was a revelation of how little I knew and how little I learnt from school. There was so much else to learn and from it live a better life.
When I read “The Intelligent Investor”, it was like talking with the dead. This was brought more to an extreme when I read about Seneca, Aristotle and Lincoln through “Courage is Calling” and “Reasons Not To Worry” on stoic virtues. Through the book, I lived their lifetimes and learning their lessons gives your worldview a little more objectivity, if not wisdom. Both are hard-won.
Exploring the ideas of the past and taking a journey through time feel like suspending reality. Shrinking whatever trivial, modern problems at hand (like laggy internet connection), this reframe imbues a sense of serenity, even if for a moment.
Reading has felt validating and assuring. “Four Thousand Weeks” and “Time Anxiety” help make sense of time and our existence, and our cosmic irrelevance. With newfound knowledge comes the confidence and peace which helps you better understand your life, and how to best live it.
Above all, as their private audience of one, books give us the self-assurance and growing peace that comes with knowledge.
The Reading Habit, Literally
Reading is quite a personal activity. It’s a performance with an audience of one – you, the reader. Like any work of art, the measure of its value is subjective and arbitrary, relevant only to you, the reader.
But yet, reading has seemed to become a means of condescension in modern society because it can be an indicator for “sophistication” or “education”. It’s tragic that what could be the legacy of previous generations written to better humanity becomes degraded.
Deciding how you read is also hugely satisfying. You can be someone who reads one book for 3 months, slowly savouring each page every night. You can also be the impatient reader who skips to the last chapter with zero context because “it’s all the same anyways”. Neither is wrong, neither is better.
Reading is but another tool to explore our world and through it better understand who we are. It is a simple luxury afforded by those who have the intrinsic curiosity to learn beyond their space and time.
But of course, you don’t need it to live a good life.
Books merely connect the reader with the writer, and the rest is an experience for the reader. In words better than my own, Emerson wrote:
“If we are related, we shall meet.”
Then through these words, we have met.
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Hi! I’m Zac, the guy behind this serendipitous, quirky blog. I’m currently on a quest to find out more about myself before Uni begins – who I am and what life has to offer. This blog is my little space where I step out of my comfort zone to share my thoughts and life experiences. I hope you enjoy reading the weekly posts. Share them if you like, or not.
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