By Gloria Okwuosa
How Many books have You read Since your Graduation
Years ago, when I was venturing into the Books businesses, I carried books to a family friend to buy. He was an “accomplished” man in his profession, but he confessed to me that he has never read a book since graduation. Sadly this is the same story with a lot of our “accompanied’ business people or career persons.
He went further to ask me a question I’ve never forgotten, “Why books?”
To which I responded, “Why not books?”
The implication of his question was not lost on me, which was; “Why not sell clothes, shoes, jewelries, or better still, household equip!
Nothing wrong with any of these, but if you are privileged to know what you want to do in life, and the platform through which to achieve it, then trading that off just to “make money “ is shortchanging destiny”.
My father in the Lord, Bishop David Oyedepo, a renowned book addict, told the story of how he was talking with one of the pastors, and after a while, he asked the pastor “ When last did you read a book because your language is weak?! That is just one of the disadvantages of a poor reading habit. It hinders quality thought processing.Reading empowers you to interact with superior minds. It helps develop creative minds out of which flow prosperous thoughts and fruitful ideas.
So, to the question, “Why books?
Books provide the primary source of information. The saying goes that “ If you want to hide anything from an African, put it inside a book!” What a sad testimony. The bane of our leadership is being led by self imposed illiterates. This has nothing to do with going to school, but about building capacity through personal development based on acquired knowledge from relevant sources. A mentally malnourished person will have an unproductive life, and knowledge is the only food for the mind.
It’s funny, when you tell people that they need to read, the ever ready excuse is that there is no time. But if a daily time log of such an individual is kept, you can log three or more hours of irrelevant and mundane activities that add no value to destiny.
This piece is inadequate to begin to enumerate the obvious benefits of a well developed and disciplined reading habit, but I hope to have more opportunities.
Reading provides an antidote for ignorance. Ignorance condemns an individual or a society to being consumption oriented, rather than production oriented.
A life will definitely achieve much more when exposed to diverse knowledge gathered through quality reading than without such exposure.
Quoting Bishop Oyedepo once again, he said “ I am a product of books, I can boldly say that books are indispensable to the total development if man”
I too, can humbly say that l am a product of books and still a work-in- progress! Like I humorously say, “where books have taken me in the last few years, seventeen years in one of Nigeria’s finest new generation banks didn’t.
Growing up in a starkly rural village to illiterate parents, but a visionary father, we were privileged to have what most families, even in cities do not have…a bookshelf!
I believe that rugged small shelf made unquantifiable contribution to the outcome of my life. The exposure books bring to a life can never be quantified.
Reading makes you a reference person!
Reading keeps you young!
Reading has the capacity to prolong life!
Get caught reading!