28 Sep. 2017
Prose
Back to the old days which I could not read and write, crying was the only way to express my idea. Hungriness, thirstiness, anxiety, all united to a single loud exclamation. A simple yet powerful way to communicate, started my journey of expressing information. With the grow of intelligence and memory, the task of reading started to press on me. With my little innocent eyes, I didn’t know what exactly I was facing, nor did I know how should I deal with it. With enough fortune, it was not me reading. Instead, my mom did the job. At the side of the bed, with a dim light, a simple story of The Ugly Duckling seemed like Greek to me. By breaking the story down into pieces, images started to float in my head. That, was my first time of getting information and get to process them. That, left me the first impression of books of writing. Characters by characters, complicated phrases first time became real images moving. Reading, first appeared to my life.
As a family with loads of magazines, my greatest joy in my free time was to take one of the magazines from my dad’s bookshelves and read them. Although I could not understand any single character, I snipped down pictures beside the text. It confirmed my association of characters with pictures. As time went on, I started to circle up characters I knew. From one, the most basic character, to hundred, of the harder ones. With my accumulation of words, time showed its effectiveness. With incoherent simplest sentence, I tried to write down my very first ideas. Writing, first appeared to my life.
Time flowed by. I learned sufficient amount of characters for independent reading. Sitting in a comfortable corner, I read. Within my hand, it was an simplified edition of Three Kingdoms, a classic historical book that excites parents but not children. Pages flipped, phrases flew by, but the image could not be created. There were no actual meaning I could extract from the book. If the image in my head was white, it was always blank. I could not find the point of reading, nor could I find the point of producing such writing. It confused me, annoyed me, depressed me, detached me from books. Why should there be books? I asked myself. No reply.
Comic books then caught my eyes. Cartoon figures filled up the space, text jumping out of the box, variation of the style of text balanced the emotion as a whole. The full understanding of the plot cheered me up. To understand was always better than knowing nothing. The more I read, the more I found it fascinating. I thought I found the purpose of reading. Cool things could always explain things, but could they?
As the increase of grade, academics became a more important aspect of my life. At the first time I saw an American textbook, I was stunned. I only knew about the thin Chinese textbook that compressed all the essentials of the subject into it, but not such a huge textbook that I could barely hold it by a single hand. It was simply heavy, or is it heavier because of its content? I could hardly tell. Similar to when I’m young and naive, I could not fluently read such large passage in English, not at all. The only thing I could do is to puzzle up the meaning by the help of translator, piece by piece. Questions could never stop popping up of my head: Can American students read such a huge book completely? I guessed they couldn’t. But I was wrong. They could, if they want to. Reading shall not be considered as a heavy task, but a delightful enjoyment in lifetime. Learn when read, enjoy when read, laugh when read, cry when read, think when read, ask when read. But never read because of read. Read because of the thing that reading brings you. That, is the real purpose.
Pen and paper, the victims of my fear of writing. Writing was such a mission impossible to accomplish. Reading my writing was like drinking plain water, boring, tasteless, numb. Why should writing be so painful? How did those great authors write? Questions popped up as I struggled on writing, facing a blank paper, attempting to fulfill the space by drawing. This won’t work, I thought, but writing won’t work, as well.
Ultimately, the fault is not writing’s, it’s mine. As I learned how to write essays by structure, as I practiced with every opportunity I got, as I integrated knowledge I learned from reading books into my writing, I know I’m not that boy who used to panic in front of writing. He’s gone, leaving me with enormous skills and optimistic attitude to writing. Instead of pain, it is now a challenge, a challenge that I’m willing to face, a challenge that I’m willing to conquer.
The journey with books is still continuing today, consistently. With my great respect to books, I am proud of my achievements derived from reading books. My ability to read and eventually analyze text, my ability to write swiftly without any hesitation, my ability to be an informed global citizen who could read and write in two different languages. Thank you, reading; thank you, writing.