How Do Reading Books Expand Our Minds? 

Many think that keeping books at home is the habit of few luxurious or home decorators. Who are those few people? People who are not simplistic like the majority of common people. The daily routine of common people is supposed to be this: to wake up, buy groceries for lunch, go work, curse traffic during transit, watch soaps or debates on TV, engage in a domestic fight or romance and get to sleep, daydream someday they are going to be rich and have everything after all is a passing momentum. 

In the film 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter', Mary Todd Lincoln used to say: "Do you know why the world is filled with plenty of common people Abe(Abraham)? Because God likes them making too much.' 

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The fundamental flaw in the perspective of common people is that book reading is confined to the people who leaped to the top layer of economics. A daily wager doesn't have time to read when he is busy with his knuckle-cracking, back-breaking work for the daily bread. It's also confirmed that an unbreakable chain is cuffed over common people to continue like that. No escape. They are not the thinking population, just agitate when they are emotionally broke or commit suicide or murder those who are responsible for their pain. That's the most they are capable of thinking.

Is this statement truth or biased truth or living truth of ages? Who can say?

If I put myself into the world of the common woman and perhaps I don't know how to talk, behave, cultivate creativity by not observing what I see, listen & sense. What is the possible thing I can do?

Keep my mouth shut. Be an introvert. But, inside I'm raging war against self & others or else burst out despite circumstances, After you’ve said, ran, exhausted, drain away all the lubricative fluids in your body enough, most introverts don’t even know they are introverts. Being quiet is not the answer. Ranting about the pain too is either.

If anxiety, microaggression, exasperation, all forms of fear, violence scares you too much about the future, not just presence, perplexed, paralyzed by thought, guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, all forms of non-forgiveness piled up as knots in your mind, when will you begin to live again? 

It was said that the Father of the Indian Constitution Baba Saheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was asked by one of his professors "what is the purpose of education?"

He remarkably replied that: "It helps us tremendously to study the world, understand the world. The purpose of educating ourselves is not just to understand the world alone but, to change the world and its course".

This answer fits rightly to the cultivating habit of reading. Reading is about knowing yourself, the world around you. And that simple skill can change the outcome of your life. 

A thinking man is unstoppable to act. What happens when one reads the right books. Bringing hold, expanding trust on goodness, breaking rules, pushing edges, challenge imposed & historically sugar-coated beliefs of what ‘acceptable’ and ‘expected’ really are, aware of exploitation, measures to shackled the invisible chains tied to frozen thoughts, cease abuse, dampen prejudice, demolish social injustice, remove poverty, perseverance to uphold self-esteem, bring about ill-doings into the pursuit of justice, manage grief and turn it into joyful contentment.

For eg., 

Initially, I read the novel 'Bitter Harvest' by Ann Rule that gave an alternative perspective on wickedness based on the real-life story of Debora Green who murdered her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar along with her two children.

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A few years later, I read the novel 'Flowers in the Attic' by Virginia Andrews too is similar in nature about the mother who locked & hide her four children in the attic in order to re-marry. 

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Then, about, a shy lean Jewish girl of 12 years, who made her hideout in Stockholm, Netherlands along with her family, fearing they couldn’t survive on their own, she kept entries in a  tiny notebook that subtly screamed a lot about the effects of fascism under the iron-hands of nazi Hitler. The book 'Diary of a young girl' gave me nightmares even after finishing it at least for a month.

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On the contrary to the above three, which showcased the before and after effects of wickedness, casualties of war from a child's eye, what strengthened the courage, built never give up attitude of womanhood is after reading the novel 'The Colour Purple by Alice Walker. It changed my flat opinion and surface-level understanding of the female identity of transcending from an 'uneducated' maid to 'self-taught' black under the political & social regime of racism & slavery.  

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By the order of my readers, it's clear the perspective towards people, things deepened book after book, bring about socio-Econo-political consciousness, exploring wanderlust yet not losing focus about the things that happen to us and around us. Book read prepared me to live outside societal expectations without compromising real virtues, to nurture and accept people's differences, shaping my life mission on establishing democracy- respect liberty based on human values, equality, kith & kinship to spread across the world.

Money doesn't matter for having the habit of reading books. If you are short of money, abundant public libraries are available with stockpiles of books, e-books flow free into your lap through the internet or mobile if you will search and download. No excuse. 

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves" - Holocaust Survivor Writer Viktor Frankl (1946 - Man's Search For Meaning)

In the film 'The Edge' when a man-hunting bear chases them in the wild, protagonist Antony Hopkins determines to fight the beast while his pal Alec Baldwin is hesitant & fearsome. Hopkin screams: "Come on! If one man can do, the other also can'. 

By reading books we all can.