The Power to dream

The Power to Dream

Books are an odd thing, they are my best friends, they make me cry smile, weep with joy and happiness and the fact they I can hold them in my hand, feel them and get transported to another age, time, or era. I mean why would I need a kindle or those new ipad minis and the download version. Agreed that, I can store as many as I can on the icloud. This all is so new fangled and before I forget the drop box also exists.

It’s enough to confuse a normal person and here I live in the boondock’s that does not even have courier service!

Yesterday, a young girl living close by generously donated her childhood library for my school kids. These kids have never owned anything; a book is a distant thing. They all have hand me down clothes, shoes, you name it, its all been shortened, tightened, or straightened out!  So, when these cartons came of a hundred odd books, ranging from Ladybird series, to the Princess wishes, to Aesop fables and Jataka tales and classics in abundance.

I decided to give each child a book for keeps. It was a joy to see their expression; at first none of them could believe that it was there’s to keep. And, then the fascination by the primary class kids with the pictures and the colorful images.

We all live very jaded lives, because we take all this for granted, as our birthright. It’s akin to breathing to buy a book (if you and your children read), read it and to put it aside with no thought of it again. For our children, and us every wish is fulfilled within our means but for these children who have never owned anything new it was exciting and a sense of disbelief at first.

The young children loved the pictures that were happy and colorful. The older ones got the classics and the fables, fairy tales and the girls got the princess ones. I was partial to some children who needed to believe and also get that nudge to dream.

I wish , more and more people would donate generously , there is  always  someone who need that power to dream.

Books are akin to life, a lot of people ( I meet this cynics everyday ) say it is a form of escapism to another realm , to another world. Yes and more. To be lost in the imagination that can transport me forever to the middle –earth and the march of the Ents is what I love.

Goblins, pixies, fairies, dwarves and more and princes and princesses and the romance of humans is what makes life  rosier. We all have our genres , some like mystery , some like detective, some like historical romance , some horror to name a few , but the bottom line is there is something written for everyone.

And, nothing comes close to the hard cover, true to life, flicking the page and reading the printed word. For me , yesterday , I saw it happen , the gleam and happiness in a young child who is underprivileged but when give the gateway to dream , to imagine , to soar high …

Books , age , become yellow , crinkle with age , fade away and they dim away but they remain one’s truest companion forever. She is never going be disloyal ,go against one’s word , or be a traitor and have any human fallacy but always be a companion  in troubled and good times.

May their tribe increase, the people who write and give us the power to dream