Reading and Happiness

“The best thing about Life is that it's never late to start again.”—Anu.

It seems I haven't read anything for ages. Well, at least for the previous couple of days.

After entering into my new job, it so happened that Sunday became the only day I could spend time in reading. The busy schedules, time tables, course structure, all the worst things in the world that can handicap a teacher's precious life has been interfering into my life too. Curiously, I now remember some of the desperate sounding comments from the teachers who taught me in the university, whose chair I now occupy and whose pride I inherit.

I had this habit of discussing with them the books I read. Whenever I met them after finishing a different book each week or month (mostly fiction because I love reading fiction) full of excitement, their faces would drop and they would say: “We haven't read anything for ages!” And they would look at each other with a sagging helplessness in their eyes. When they were in their attempt to console their sick soul, I would stand beside them and smile at their “inefficiency” and wonder at those unsaid reasons that prevented them from their time with books and eventually conclude in my mind that they lack a certain “determination” or “dedication” to literature.

Living my life in the teaching profession now, which all those teachers who mourned over no reading once led, I too realise that I am no different, because I haven't read anything for ages. One thing I can find in my present life is the “inefficiency” I found in my teachers', my silent self contentment in feeling pity towards the teachers during those days back then, when I was a sophomore.

I am dedicated to my cause, reading. I am determined. But there is something...something that prevents me from reading. May be teaching job is tiring me out inevitably, and leaving me skull and bones after each class. That might be why I find it hard to get into reading with a fresh perspective or with enough physical energy, at night at home. Then how is this article born, which sounds like a confession register, and elaborates upon myself with self-pity?

The reason is very simple. It’s been there in books and movies, fantasies and fairy tales since ages; the secret of happiness. The other day I watched a movie. It was about a man who lives away from his friends, coming back to help them, after getting a call. He runs his own company and had earned a huge fortune. But in his past he was a night watchman in a museum where his friends lived, the mannequins and ancient creatures who mysteriously come to life at every night by the power of a mysterious Egyptian golden tablet. At the end of his adventure he realises the answer for the quest for happiness. The secret of happiness is doing what you love to do. And as I write this article I feel happy and at peace with myself. May be now, I can go back to reading Room, by Emma Donogue.