This is going to sound a little unusual coming from me, but lately I’ve felt that my vocabulary is rather limited. I came to realise this over the past two months or so, as I’ve begun to read more books again. I used to be an extensive reader as a child and I’ve always been very expressive with my thoughts, but I’ve also always limited myself to the bare minimum when it comes to words. I strongly believe in a simple, minimalistic approach when it comes to communication. Any additional embellishment is unnecessary and only serves to cloud your message and confuse your audience. For the longest time, I was absolutely content with my level of expression and understanding.

Lately though, I’ve come to realise that there are actually quite a lot of words that I am uncertain about. I’ve reached the stage where sometimes I quite literally don’t have the words I need to properly express myself. I’ve always pondered, ever since one of my enlightening KI classes, about the relationship between language and expression. Can you feel something that you cannot express? Does your mastery of your language affect the way you actually think? I was rather uncertain initially, but my present circumstances are proof that what I instinctively felt was true. As with music or even facial expressions, the more tools you have at your disposal and the better your mastery of them, the stronger the influence you have over the message which you desire to communicate.

To put it simply, as I always try to, a mastery of a mode of communication not only allows you to communicate better with others, but with yourself as well- and this can allow you to reach thoughts, emotions, arguments and feelings which you might not have been able to otherwise ascertain. When they’re not fully fleshed out, I reason, they don’t truly exist in the real sense. This is deja vu to me, because I have most definitely experienced it several times as a musician who has not come anywhere close to a reasonable mastery of my art. It’s enlightening, it’s frightening, and it’s one of the most amazing feelings in the world- that you’re actually making progress and covering new ground.

I am now fueled with a renewed passion for learning and understanding the written language, not because I want to impress you with my vocabulary, but because it will help me reach further outwards to express myself better, as well inwards to come to terms with what I might not have been able to express before.

It’s such a simple idea, yet holds so much weight. I am humbled.

I feel it’s also relevant to address why I stopped reading in the first place. Understanding it is important to me in developing a broader understanding of myself in general, and may be interesting or relevant to you. When I was a young child, I used to read voraciously. It was like jumping into new entire worlds- of fantasy, science, history, the human condition. I could go on for hours about all the magical experiences I had when I was reading as a child (and I certainly shall, but that’s for another post). What I couldn’t understand initially was why I had stopped reading, but it all makes sense to me now. I stopped reading heavily when I was about 13 or 14. The seemingly obvious answer is that I was won over by the flashing lights and sounds of computer games, anime, movies. Words on a page couldn’t compare to that, surely?

I refused to believe that my mind would have been so easily won over by something so primal and juvenile. There had to be something more to it, and at some point recently, it clicked. I was fascinated not by the games themselves, but by the interactive and social element of it all. I was becoming more of an extrovert, spending lots of time making friends, getting into trouble- and in short, I had moved on from vicariously exploring the world of books to literally exploring the world that had opened up in front of me. Staying over at friends’ houses, playing in a rock band, falling in love, drinking and smoking, witnessing the life and death of relationships, coming to terms with the reality of death itself… the books couldn’t possibly compare to the world which was opening up before my eyes, and responding to my actions. On retrospect, it was like being a newborn baby all over again- touching and feeling the world around me, making mistakes, getting in trouble. The world is much less forgiving when you’re an adolescent, but it really is like a second birth.

Things have changed now. I stopped reading because I felt like there was nothing more to learn from books (which is an absolutely absurd notion, you don’t have to tell me) and I was far more interested in jumping into the deep end of life itself. (You could say that I was following the Pareto 80-20 principle) Now, it feels like I’ve come full circle. I’m 19 years old and I have gotten my fair share of the driver’s wheel these past 7 years or so. I’ve made stupid decisions, and I’ve made good ones. I’ve been motivated by noble causes, and ridiculously desolate ones. Now it feels like I’ve learnt the bulk of what I was meant to learn from living life on the edge, and the time has come for me to return to the previous state. It’s like a never-ending cycle. Right now, it feels like that there is so much that I have to learn about myself and the world around me from the wisdom of others. I have a deepened interest in philosophy, economics, sociology, mathematics… every single field of learning and understanding. I am making sense of the world around me, I am making sense of myself, and I am on the right path. Sometimes I do things for stupid reasons, but I’ve always needed a reason nevertheless. For the past 7-10 years, I didn’t have a convincing reason to study hard. Now I do. (Just in time, too!)

It’s such a simple idea, yet holds so much weight. I am humbled.