A Part of What Reading and Writing Mean to me…
As a passionate reader, I am equally, if not even more of a passionate writer. I would actually say that my passion for writing began before my obsession with books. Of course, as students, we’ve all been through some form of writing assignment where teachers want us to come up with something on the spot, literature reviews, or some type of autobiography paper. I’ve also always had strong feelings toward academic systems (post coming up soon!) but overall in school, I had the most fun with my writing assignments. They allowed me to create unique and chosen aspects of new worlds — including our own little social bubbles to whole new planets — which I wanted to believe I could literally see. My youth is filled with imagination.
What writing will do for you is open doors in your own head. That’s what I believe. Even if you don’t enjoy writing school papers. Don’t do it for that (but do your schoolwork haha)! Here’s a basic possible start: Take some time to write about your usual everyday life, and then enhance it into something else. Maybe you and your siblings are intergalactic protectors with planets under your own names. You have people to be responsible over, and there are new villains, weapons, and philosophies. Or maybe you just want to write about how you had a bit of a sad day. Everything seemed like it was a pale, sickening blue color, you couldn’t control your expression to change from it’s weighted, dreary look and the throb you felt in the corner of your left eye was only the beginning of the coming migraine. I don’t know! The pencil touching paper is the key, opening a door that allows a new wave of enlightenment.
Writing doesn't have to be work, but it’s understandable if it’s overwhelming or if you face writer’s block often. Even the best writers face issues particular to them. To me, writing is almost like holding your breath underwater or being under your covers in bed, but once you pop your head out, that first intake of cool, fresh air is what it feels like reading your overall product. It blows you away into a world untouched by your own. A world where what you think up of and imagine is happening! You can feel accomplished looking back at your work.
As a Muslim, I’ve learned that literature is so deeply ingrained within my people’s history that it blows my mind every time I think about it. I mean, why don’t people know about Andalusia?! In Islamic History, the first verse of the Quran — Islam’s holy text — that was sent down from Allah was اقرأ, which translates to…read! It is compulsory and a priority for Muslims, both men AND women, to gain knowledge. No, that doesn’t mean to stuff yourself in some academic institution forever haha. It means that there is something to be learned in life and that you must go out there, and collect, contemplate, and interpret the knowledge that the larger universe has to offer. There are a plethora of scholars out there who’ve said, time after time, to continue to increase your knowledge, never to cease learning until the moment you end. سبحان الله! A human is indeed a student from the time of their birth until the time of their death.
Aside from my faith, my cultural background also ties into literature. Urdu, the national language of Pakistan is known for its شاعری, it’s poetry. The language is used in many ways from being spoken in period Bollywood films to give off the feelings of antiquity to being inked onto thick pages, scripts with the most important messages told oh so beautifully.
Reading all kinds of literature and writing from your own creativity, or even for academic, professional, contemplative, or other reasons mean a lot to me in more than one way. Not only do I feel illuminated from the inside out thinking back to my roots and my connection to literature through my people’s history, but I also feel a greater and strengthened sense of satisfaction in my adoration for reading and writing.
“ As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive…My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness…” -Malcolm X
