Why Must You Read?

To understand the gravity of this question, let’s start with another question- Why must you eat? Though the answer may be obvious, but let’s dig deeper. You eat to get energy and nutrients. Energy and nutrients, for what? For work! Your body works day and night. It doesn’t stop working, even when you are sleeping. Every cell in your body is engaged in one metabolic activity or the other. So, this compels them to need energy. But, let’s go further. Why must your body work? To keep you alive. If your body doesn’t work, you won’t be alive. Okay, let’s go a little bit further. Why must you be alive? To add value to life; to be a blessing to the earth. Can we go further? Why must you be a blessing to the earth? To prevent the earth from deteriorating. To keep and protect it (as the first man, Adam was instructed). And to make the earth a lovely place. 

You originally came from heaven, and so you have all the traits of heaven. But when you came here on earth, you were brainwashed to believe that you are just as normal as other living creatures. Your contribution should just be normal - be for yourself, your family and your close friends. No reason to look at the world as a whole and see what value you can add to humanity or better still, deploy your gifts and manifest the reason why you were created. Back to our original question, Why must you read? I used food because it’s the closest illustration and allegory I could use. You read because you want to acquire knowledge. Many read because they want to acquire certificates. But that’s not enough. Such people have ridiculed the value of reading, wasting their time and energy. No wonder there are many graduates who are not educated, because they only acquire information to pass exams and not to become part of them that would allow them to add value to the world. 

When you read, you acquire knowledge, for what? Knowledge is food to your mind, just like normal food to your body. It provides your mind energy and nutrients. But make sure it’s good and relevant knowledge, otherwise it could be a poison to your mind, just like the way you eat wrong food, it becomes problem in your body. So, good knowledge supposed to nourish and energize your mind. And this is for what? For work! You’ve got to engage your mind and spirit to work. Many people think we only do physical work. They don’t know we also do mental and spiritual works. And as a matter of fact, both mental and spiritual works are more important by far than the physical work. The more mental and spiritual works you do, the less physical work you do. 

Let’s focus on mental work. Mental work is fully engaging your mind for maximum productivity. What do you do with your mind? To think or process thoughts. You essentially use your mind to think. What is thinking? Thinking is the process by which you put different data together in your mind to solve a problem. It is your ability to ask intelligent questions and find the right solutions. It is your ability to bring different thoughts in your mind together to form a wholesome truth, a workable idea or plan that engenders value or proffers solutions. When you do this, you do mental work. 

There are many problems in our world today that are waiting for solutions. Problems cannot be exhausted. As one is solved, another one is created. So, they don’t stop coming. And that’s good for our world. Because that’s what makes us valuable and useful on earth. Problems are burgers that intelligent minds feed on to make them shine. If you want to solve problem, you’ve got to engage your mind in thinking. You’ve got to take your time, do research for knowledge and energize your mind so that it can be strong enough to work. 

Lazy minds can’t do tough work because they lack knowledge. Needless to say, they are never productive and would never have result in life. Leaders are readers because they always want to expand their minds and do better in what they do. When you solve problems through mental work, you add value to the world. When you add value to the world, you bring heaven on earth, and fulfill your purpose and glorify your father in heaven. 

Just before I close, here’s another important thing that reading does to your mind. Reading enhances your creative imagination. When you read, you create pictures of what you read in your mind. That gradually exercise your brain muscle and you become more and more proficient with connecting and extrapolating information and facts, coupled with creating pictures and ideas in your mind. As time goes on, you become smarter and more intelligent and that would enhance your problem-solving skills and ideas-creating ability.