My fourth lesson learned from my dad is the passion I have inherited from him on the subject of reading and learning. Ever since I was a child I recall being surrounded by books in every room. Wherever we lived our home would have a library and shelves full of books.
He introduced me to many books such as the book by Norman Vincent Peale, the Power of Positive Thinking and Dale Carnegie’s book How to win friends and influence people. He bought me to Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl which opened my eyes to power of the mind.
Dad would say the only way to improve our mind was through reading and through quiet observation of the world around us. He would put his comments in pencil in the books he read, and to this day, I still find books with his commentary inside.
I don’t know when this happened but his insatiable appetite for reading and writing is his gift to me. As a child he encouraged me to join the library and we would often read the same book and discuss, sometimes late into the night.
My dad loved learning, though nowadays we rely on online search engines, our home is full of dictionaries. Dad used to look up the spelling, remember those days? He loved words and their intricate meaning. His command of the language was powerful, and he made me fall in love with Gujarati literature which is quite strange considering I learnt this language age 10.
I thought I was the only one who kept journals but after my dad died, I found some of his notebooks where he had written inspirational quotes with his commentary next to it. He was always trying to improve himself, he would often ask me to check his English.
My dad loved literature, and he would sometimes order tea chests from India full of books, especially the Bhagvad Gita to giveaway. He used to teach the Bhagvad Gita, and he had a beautiful way of making old scriptures relatable in the modern context. Pretty impressive for a person who left school age 14.
He was the kind of man who read Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge or George Orwell’s The Animal Farm, and read the Upanishads which are the ancient Hindu scriptures.
He had a lifetime subscriptions of magazines on philosophy and life, which I receive to this day.
Reading and learning is the food for the soul and the mind. We never know enough and there is always a better way to approach life was his lesson to me.
I hope this resonates, please like, repost and share with your thoughts if you wish. Thank you for being a part of my journey as I pay homage to this man I am proud to call my father.
© DMP
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