Reading

I suppose what I find most wonderful about my younger years is that life was boundless, was never defined. My mother said that as a child, I loved everything about performing—I danced even as a hundred pairs of eyes watched, I sang songs whose lyrics I did not know, and I ran up any empty stage I came across just to admire things from that vantage point.

Such things fascinated me, but one thing above all: mystery. I was always very curious, always fascinated by the unusual—those not considered “normal.” While I had yet to understand why so many of the adults I knew were not drawn to the things that I or any other child was, I saw that they just were not, and that to satisfy my desire, I had to seek elsewhere. This hunger of mine, I found, would be assuaged by books. The books I read years ago bore one common factor. Although written by a range of authors, filled with so many different stories, and enveloped in covers, thick and thin, they aroused my eagerness to venture into the unknown.

The books that encapsulate the idea of what I used to read would have to be “The Secret Garden” and those of the Ugenia Lavender series. The former is a version of the classic story that I bought on a day out. The synopsis interested me, and the story absolutely did not disappoint. What I really enjoyed was that the aura of uncertainty and of being unknowing induced, not fear, but the adrenaline of adventure and discovery. This book was rather simple, but at that age, I found it hard to decode, as the words used and the paragraph structures were somewhat beyond my comprehension. It took a while before I finished it, but when I did, I managed to bring home with me the essential lesson of dauntlessness and curiosity. On the other hand, the Ugenia Lavender books were relatively easier to read. Still, the message that came across to me was one and the same.

Although I meant no malice or harm by my reading, I do admit that the habit was narcotic and selfish. It was purely my form of entertainment, and I wanted nothing more from reading than an escape from the reality of norms and averages. I read, not realizing that I could have done so in a way that may have benefited me better. Nonetheless, I do believe that my reading experiences would be of great use to me in the long run.

As I realized that reading is a necessity rather than a dispensable leisure, I was thankful, for reading itself was at least not something I was unaccustomed to do. I wouldn’t bring back my methods of reading if I had the chance, as I now know better. But if I may, I do wish that the limitless pools of wonder we used to have would come back and bring more sparkle in our lives.

Kimberley Sanchez, 15, is a psychology freshman at the University of the Philippines Diliman.