Memoirs of an Amnesiac

I love reading books as much as I love buying them. But lately, most of my hard-earned money is spent hoarding a lot of books which are mostly about rearing and educating children. Wait, I did buy one on relationships from my favorite Christian author. And guess what, they still lie on my desk and already accumulating dust, waiting for me to notice them. What fancies me now are those trilogies. I just finished Divergent by Virginia Roth and is waiting for the sequel.

You can now safely say that I am a book worm. But really I don't consider myself to be one. I still feel there are a lot more books waiting for me to devour them. When acquaintances mention some books, I immediately ask them for copies, as if missing them would mean missing a big part of my life. With a sense of urgency, I would open them and unravel the mysteries that lie behind those pages (at other times, yellowed ones).

I love the smell of old books. There is just something behind them that just entices me to read them (more than their colors spelling out their antiquated state). Mildew or whatever you call them, sticks out on its bottom flanks or edges and yet I see them as new and glossy. I guess I need to see my ophthalmologist. Something must be wrong with my eyesight.

If I were a book, I would very much liken myself to a paperback -- soft and light, one that gets to be dog-eared once not taken cared properly. One that you would not hesitate curling in bed with. One that does not respond once you lay on it. One that creases on its spine once opened. One that is a constant ally even in the comfort rooms.

Whatever I learned most from life. I probably have learned from the books I've read. Like self-help books, I always seem to have an advice for almost any form of trouble there is --love, stain, failing, what-have-you. This explains why most of my blogs here are very prescriptive.

I am a firm believer in the concept that in order to lead, one must read. I tell my students, "You and your classmates all have the same set of books underneath your chairs. If you read the same set of books without bothering to read other than the prescribed textbooks, nothing separates you from your seatmate." This works well all the time for me. Sometimes I would find myself being spellbound by students who often read more than I do. Oh, well, teachers need to learn from students, too.

But the greatest and the most humbling lessons I truly learned are from those painful experiences I went through. They have shaped and molded me, something that books (even when written by Dalai Lama himself) could not do, in all its loftiness and eloquence.

I still think that life is one whole paperback. It needs to studied in parts and understood as a whole.