Please read, write and study

It may sound like an unwanted reminder, but I think we need to give a boost to these basic and indispensable exercises no matter how old and accomplished we may be by now.

I believe that the older and more accomplished we are, the more sharply we should feel the need to read, write and study. These activities correspond to our human nature as persons and dignity as children of God.

Sad to say, now we see many people neglecting this duty and thus we see the logical consequences. Many do not know anymore how to think properly, how to express themselves adequately, how to argue and reason. Many people do not know how to relate things together and come out with well-integrated views. Now we find it harder to get beyond the immediate and concrete environment, beyond current biases and conditionings. We may display an impressive facade of sophistication, given the amount of data we may have. But since these data are now well-processed, we still end up clueless, naive, even gullible.

Complicating this veneer of superficiality, narrow-mindedness and shortsightedness is the likelihood of self-righteousness and malice. We have to be more aware of this possibility. How is this to happen? Our nature cannot suppress the spontaneous working of our will or ego. If that ego is not given its true bearing, thus acting as a child of God, then it seeks to be puffed up, not with real substance but with hot air. We start acting like something other than a child of God.

Thus, a growing environment of confusion, error and arrogant ignorance is made. Maliciously cultivated self-images of ourselves proliferate. We won't be talking with real persons anymore, but with masks and objects.

I just wonder where all these would lead us. Thus, we need to rouse ourselves and do something drastic. Reading, writing and studying are basic skills we always need to do to keep and develop our humanity. Reading, writing and studying help us to perceive and live in a reality more proper to us-not in a world of the material and the physical only, but also in the world of the spiritual.

These skills allow us to enter into areas otherwise closed to the power of our senses. They expand our world, deepen our perceptions, exercise our distinctively human powers as compared to our merely animal powers. These skills enable us to enter into meaningful dialogue with the past and the present worlds, to participate in some global dialogue and debate, to shape our future somehow. They figure prominently in our ongoing, lifelong formation.

They let us develop a sense of the global market of ideas, important for us to develop also a sense of what we can contribute to this market, much like what a business entrepreneur does.

They effectively ground us in history, culture and tradition, while sharpening in us a sense of creativity and inventiveness. They are indispensable to actualize our potentials and to pursue our goal of wisdom and maturity.

We have to rouse ourselves from our tendency to be passive and complacent with respect to knowledge, contented with simply watching TV or relying on the media alone, listening to gossips or pursuing idle curiosities. In all these, effort has to be made to do all our reading, writing and studying in the presence of God. Otherwise, we tend to fail to distinguish between fact and fiction, truths and products of our imagination, beliefs and make-believe. And we would get into more serious trouble. Let us encourage everyone to develop the habit of reading, writing and studying!

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