Books help us to live

The art of reading is in great part that of acquiring a better understanding of life from one's encounter with it in a book.  ~André Maurois

It would be wonderful if we could look at our lives from above, if we could fly high in the sky and observe our daily routine, our mistakes and successes from distance, analyze our failures closely and change the way we live. But unfortunately it is almost impossible as it is quite difficult to evaluate your life objectively from outside of your personal narrative. There are several things though that can help us to look at our lives from a different angle and to explore various sides of our life story with its defeats and achievements. Travelling abroad, learning a foreign language, changing the place you live and work undoubtedly can help to open your eyes on your life and better understand your identity. But there is another way that can deepen your understanding of life and enable you to look at your life narrative through different lenses. It is a book - that like a fast moving river transforms you into the magical world of fiction allowing us to discover a more profound understanding of life, to recognize and identify ourselves with the main characters and look at their and our daily existence from a different perspective. Reading a book is like reading about your own life being lived by a different person – it helps you to better comprehend your mistakes, find the root of your unhappiness or to simply gain a new insight into the bottomless meaning of life, widen your horizons and learn a wise lesson.

There are a lot of books that had a tremendous effect on my life enabling me to better understand my soul, to evaluate my life and analyze certain past mistakes, to change some of my personal principles and gain certain wisdom. The books that I read recently and enjoyed a lot – “An Artist of the Floating World” by Ishiguro and “A Question of Power” by Bessie Head – are full of priceless answers to numerous questions of our life. Reading these books is like opening a jar of wisdom that sprinkles your entire body with little messages of truth that penetrate your skin and provide your brain with precious knowledge about the secrets of life. 

“An Artist of the Floating World” by Ishiguro is a brilliant book that offers us a lot of clues on how not to be afraid to look back on your life and confront your past mistakes in order to embrace the future.  The main character of the book, Ono, at the late stage of his life recollects his memories when he was a young artist. From the very first pages of the novel we see that Ono, who at first glance appears quite content with his life, is being haunted by his past that undoubtedly influences his present life. We detect that somehow his past choices cost his younger daughter her marriage and makes his son-in-law dislike Ono’s generation. As we read further on and get a closer look at Ono’s life as a young artist at Master Takeda’s studio we discover that it was Ono’s decision to support Japan’s aspiration to go to war and to change his art style to promote the war that still bothers him. At that point of his life Ono recognized that he was “hiding away from the real world” and the “floating world” he used to portray in his paintings was quite different from the real world where poverty and unemployment were spreading at an incredible rate. Ono supported Japan’s imperial power and military ambitions that promised the prosperity of his nation and its people as he truly believed that it would help to improve the situation in the country. He had the best intentions when he starts using his talent to depict soldiers instead of geishas, rifles instead of fans.  He strongly believed that he was doing the right thing until Japan lost the war, millions of young people died including his own son Kenji, his younger daughter’s marriage negotiations fell through and young people like his son-in-law started to blame Ono and his generation for the loss of thousands of innocent lives. At first Ono didn’t want to acknowledge the feelings of guilt in his heart as it is always difficult to admit your past mistakes especially when you truly believed that you were making the right choice at that time. But after the conversation with his son-in-law Suichi who said: “Brave young men die for stupid causes, and the real culprits are still with us. Afraid to show themselves for what they are, to admit their responsibility,” Ono finally becomes aware of the fact that he was one of those people who supported the war and who might have caused all these numerous innocent deaths (58).

The turning point in the novel occurs at his daughter’s second marriage negotiations where Ono for the first time openly admits that his past choice was wrong. During the dinner he utters candidly: “As far as I am concerned, I freely admit I made many mistakes. I accept that much of what I did was ultimately harmful to our nation, that mine was part of an influence that resulted in untold suffering for our own people” (123). It takes a lot of courage to admit your responsibility and by finally confronting his past choices Ono is ready for a new future.  In the final scene of the book we lastly see that Ono was able to confront his past, accept the fact that he made mistakes and open his heart to embrace the future. When Ono sees all the changes made to his old favorite pleasure district which now has transformed into a business center with “glass-fronted office buildings” he feels “a certain nostalgia for the past” (205-206). He likes to sit on a little bench which he believes occupies a “spot very close” to where his old table in the old pleasure district would have been situated, which surely represents his connection to the past (206). But Ono feels happiness when he is watching cheerful young office workers from his bench. Even though he is still “sitting on his past” and carrying the baggage of his past experience and mistakes, he is willing to accept the future. He is genuinely happy when he sees that his nation “whatever mistakes it may have made in the past, has now another chance to make a better go of things” (206).

The character like Ono teaches us a very valuable lesson in life – in order to live happily and be ready to embrace the future you need to face your past mistakes, analyze them and admit your responsibility. It is important to be honest with yourself and look at your past candidly in order to decide if your choices were right, if the decisions you made in the past were sincere. If you realize that you made certain mistakes, you have to accept this fact, to acknowledge and admit that you were wrong otherwise you will always be haunted by your past and won’t be able to move on to face the future. Once you confront your past, you will feel a great relief as if a heavy stone was taken off your shoulders and your heart will open up for a new spring.

Another riveting book that can help us to better understand our soul and to discover our inner harmony is “A Question of Power” written by Bessie Head. “A Question of Power” is a story about Elizabeth, a simple school teacher in Bostwana, who is disturbed by her inner demons at night that torture her poor heart and make her lose the sense of reality. Elizabeth in her dreams was taken on a “nightmare soul journey” (35) by two “reincarnations of prophet-like figures”, Sello and Dan, the representations of good and evil, light and darkness, God and Satan (Burton, 72). She also encounters the cruelest of Sello’s incarnations, Medusa, a dreadful representation of Elizabeth’s demons and fears who constantly chases her and causes her mental break down. Medusa brings all the demons that occupy her soul together, she makes Elizabeth’s fears push away the goodness in her heart. She destroys Elizabeth’s inner peace, makes her “sick to the point of death” (65) and wants her dead: “Dog, filth, the Africans will eat you to death” (45).  In her conversation with Birgette she frankly admits: “I am being dragged down, without my willing, into a whirlpool of horrors. I prefer nobility and goodness but a preference isn’t enough; there are forces who make a mockery of my preferences” (85). She can’t handle this suffering anymore that is why she realizes that in order to overcome her fears and obtain happiness, she has to confront her demons, she has to stare Medusa down and face all the evils that eat up her heart as “people only function well when their inner lives are secure and peaceful” (49).  And she does it. She gathers all her strength and wins the bloody battle with Medusa by staring directly into her eye. “Each night she looked straight into Medusa’s powerful black eyes. It was tracing the evil to its roots” (92). Elizabeth was able to confront her fears, free her soul from demons and embrace love and goodness. 

But she wouldn’t be able to “lever out” of her four year “strange journey to hell” (198), overcome all her demons and recover from her mental illness without the “ordinary human kindness and decency” that she got from her friend Tom. He sympathized with Elizabeth’s soul-sufferings and visited her every day when she was struggling with her mental break down. Elizabeth who never knew the love of her own parents and never had relatives now found compassion and benevolence in a close soul mate who she could confide in. She told Tom about all the agony she experienced in her dreams, she shared with him a very personal part of her soul that was tortured brutally every night. Tom, whose generous heart “could feed a billion people,” simply was there for her to distract her mind from all the pain, to show her that unconditional love still existed in this world (195).  Each time Elizabeth saw Tom her “soul-death was over in that instant” as he had a special way to wash her bleeding heart in a soothing nectar of compassion and love (188).

Elizabeth’s story is a great example of how to conquer your personal demons and achieve inner peace. Sometimes it is necessary to experience soul suffering in order to turn into a mentally stronger and happier individual, to find serenity in your heart and discover a sense of identity.  From Elizabeth’s experience we can also learn how simple acts of human kindness and compassion can have an incredible effect on somebody’s life.  

Yes, books are like doctors: they can point to any malfunction in your body and mind and provide you with the right type of medicine to treat it. Books work like magic - they can change your attitude towards the world, can give you an alternative viewpoint on life and provide access to the numerous mysteries and secrets of life. All the lessons you learn and all the knowledge you gain from reading a book is an invaluable treasure that every one of us should cherish and apply to our everyday life. Or as Charles W. Eliot once said: ”Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. “