Why I Read

"Why did you read all four books?" a peer asked me after I revealed my summer reading list. "Well," I said, "I thought they would punish me if I didn't." Was this a total lie to get someone off my back, or was it the truth? While it was probably a combination of both, I decided I read for myself. I read to find out about the issues I had been struggling with, like time and humanity. To have feelings that I have never experienced and to escape. With these books I was no longer a scared middle-class white boy from Tennessee, and though it may be cheesy, I was anyone, anywhere.

The issue of time has caught my attention since reading Siddhartha. I desperately want to understand time since it is the basis of society. We live in the present, but these words are in the past. Sure, you could read the words over again, but the first impression is the past. So the past is really all we can look at. But the past does not matter if it is temporary. In 1984 Orwell states, "he who controls the past controls the future." The verb "controls" is very important here. It is in a present tense, stating that he who can change the past owns the future. So why would the past matter if it is changeable? The year could not even be known. It could be the same day forever. Why does the past matter anyway... or even the present? On a large time scale everything we know is but a blip. Einstein's Dreams proposes a profound statement which indirectly points out that the supernatural controls time. We will not be able to slow down the last second, so it will last 'forever'. We can't touch time; it's out of our reach. So therefore, life as we know it has an ending when God says so. Time will continue to pass until the end at its seemingly eternal rate. It's like a river, unstoppable and ever flowing. Trying to battle the current is futile. The pain just makes you feel time pass more slowly when in fact the river keeps running. While personal existence may seem unimportant, Celie from The Color Purple brings across an important statement, " I'm poor, I'm black, I may be ugly... But I am here." While the past, future, and present may seem incredibly small, it's all we have.