'A word after a word after a word is power', says Margaret Atwood.
Oftentimes, we associate change with a major life-shaking event. On the contrary, change is subtle. It's hidden in those genuine smiles of holding a book you'd been longing to buy and the tears of crying for your favorite character. It happens silently as you flip those pages while keeping your sleep and life gently on the shelf. As you mark and highlight excerpt after excerpt, and excitedly bring out those colorful sticky notes, you think you're nurturing a memory but deep down, you've changed in ways you can't fathom. Other times, you can sense this change flowing in your body. You can't stop reading because you can't stop falling for words. And those books end up being your 'favorites'. You relate to them yet they leave an imprint you never knew existed before.
Books are powerful because they allow you to be someone else and be somewhere else. Sometimes, you become the main character; other times a character that is just there for a short interval. Moving between crevices of time, you transition with the books you read and anticipate reading.
One thing that can be said of books and people is that the boundaries need to be traversed to make sense of them. The barriers are strong enough to be shaken easily. But, once books make sense to you, imagination comes in waves; sweeping you off your feet. That's how you know that books change your life. The good part is that once you change after reading, you can never be the same person you were before reading a book. Your heart opens up like one big bud to possibilities, essence, light, and change.
Here are some books that changed my life:
1) Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl:
It highlights the essence of the meaning of life, and I believe that's the core of our existence. If we fail at finding meaning in our lives, whatever we choose to do is futile. There has to be meaning even if we are bound to unfortunate circumstances because, at the end of the day, freedom lies in our choice to do what we need to do about our circumstances. Emphasizing how liberating finding meaning can be despite being a prisoner, the author did make a significant impact on how I perceive freedom, choices, and impact. Most importantly, this book made me acknowledge the power of suffering and my power to do something about it. Totally empowering!
Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
2) Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom:
This book is like a heartfelt conversation, a soothing rhythm, a comforting hug, for everyone who craves to understand and to be understood. We do get self-absorbed to look beyond ourselves and end up in the miserable web of self-pitying but while reading books like these, we feel as if someone is giving our heart a gentle nudge, to be more of what we should be by looking way beyond ourselves. A dying man can teach you to make peace with your life and with the sinking thought of your death. I mourned his death with each page I read yet I was able to make peace with myself.
So loved this excerpt from this book:
Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else. Something hurts you, yet you know it shouldn’t. You take certain things for granted, even when you know you should never take anything for granted. A tension of opposites, like a pull on a rubber band. And most of us live somewhere in the middle.
3) Radio Silence by Alice Oseman:
This book centers around the YouTube podcast named Universe City, made by Aled Last, and Frances Janvier who loves this podcast with all her heart. It's a multi-themed novel, about genuine friendships, abusive parents, and the love for the art you are, with various emotions and expressions intact. The story is written from the point of view of Frances Janvier who is an entirely different person in her head. Well isn't every person a different world within him/her? I liked how she observed different people around her and the little funny things she noted in her mind. She owned who she was - a studious, dedicated person known for being academically serious. She didn't yearn to fit in, and she's comfortable being her own person. She did blame herself for being awkwardly caught in situations at times. But that didn't stop her from being authentic. This book allowed me to perceive authenticity in diverse ways.
I just ran away from all the difficult things in my life. If something's hard to talk to someone about something difficult, I just avoid it & ignore them, as if that'll make it go away.
4) Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman:
A Man Called Ove feels like life - making you smile, laugh and cry, all at the same time. I can't help but think of a world where I come across people like Ove. (Wishful thinking.) A world where what you did mattered more than what you said. A world where you say what suffocates your heart, rather than saying anything that feels easier to say. On top of it all, I felt a warm respect for who Ove chose to be all his life. A man with a beautiful warmth in his heart, doing things because they needed to be done, not because he wanted to prove himself in one way or another. A man who didn't only love his wife for the rest of his life, but also loved her memory, in ways people don't even know one can be loved. Truly changed my perception of emotions, memories, life, and death.
For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.
5) 1984 by George Orwell:
1984 is such an impactful piece of work; though fiction, it's synonymous & relevant to current times as well. Divided into three parts regarding how it all starts with thoughts, then words & ultimately leading towards actions. George Orwell has crafted his thoughts about power, individuality, freedom, the ways of the war & the brilliant power of thoughts in such an engrossing way that even if you ain't a fan of classics (like me), you're intrigued to read more. This book is like reading reality even though you feel everything around you from the deepest inch of your heart. It's as George says, "The book fascinated him or more exactly it assured him. In a sense, it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction, it said that he would have said if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already."
Now that I reflect on change and books, I feel books make you more of yourself, in silent whispers. Layer after layer, you are exposed to life, embracing your authentic self.
