THE WORLD DID NOT END IN DECEMBER 1999
— text published on Blogger on July 14, 2020, by Wagner Risso.
The year was 1999, and there we were, all anxious about the arrival of the year 2000. There were rumors that the world would end, and many people claimed to see strange lights in the sky. That was what echoed through the small town of Itaqui, in the countryside of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil). I remember sitting there, watching my father with a green book in his hands. That day I asked myself: what could my father be reading?
Then, with the vibrant curiosity of a seven-year-old boy, I waited for him to put the book down and went to grab it. The title was “Plants in Domestic Medicine.” It contained a few black-and-white illustrations. I sat on the couch with it in my hands and felt a deep urge to color those drawings.
Hidden from my parents, I scribbled on the pages of that book while, out of curiosity, reading some of its pages. I understood very little, but I absorbed some information that would later prove useful.
And that was my first relationship with a book without any imposition from a teacher. It was pure desire and curiosity.
The year the world was supposed to end was the year a new world began for me. However, I am not here to talk about myself, but rather to talk about books and how they impact people’s lives.
From my perspective, it all comes down to words: the action is reading them, and the benefits vary widely. I was reading about a study conducted in a hospital in Rhode Island (USA) that tested eight-year-old children. Those whose parents read stories to them showed a 40% greater vocabulary development, with effects that extend into adult life through an expanded lexicon.
I firmly believe in the benefits that reading brings to our society, because no matter how much the channels change, the foundation of a physical book, an e-book, or even a video script is still the written word.
There are studies showing that, during difficult moments in life, reading about related themes induces us to experience the character’s struggle in the book and transfer it to real life, helping us develop a perspective for self-evaluation.
There are countless other benefits, such as combating insomnia and stimulating memory. I remember that when I was eight years old, we would go to the school library with our teacher. We would sit in a circle to listen to stories and were later invited to read small books ourselves.
I recall one of those moments vividly. I was reading a book by the writer Francisco Marins called “The Mystery of the Golden Hills,” which told the story of two young men searching for the legendary gold mine of the martyrs.
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After that book, I came to understand the true power of books: their ability to take us to places where we are free to create within our imagination. That is truly magical.
As the years passed, I continued to cultivate this habit, not only with books. Around 2004, my father began subscribing to the printed newspaper Zero Hora. It was an addiction — I read everything. Later, we also subscribed to Época magazine and the famous Reader’s Digest, a monthly magazine created in 1922 by Lila Bell Wallace and DeWitt Wallace in Chappaqua, NY. In Brazil, however, it was published under the title Seleções.
It was full of curiosities from around the world, and what I loved most were the military jokes. From there on, I began to challenge myself further by reading other books. The first was a collection of short stories by the British writer Frederick Forsyth, titled “No Mercy.”
It may seem like very little, but reading just two books a year already represents a reading habit more advanced than that of 50% of the Brazilian population, unfortunately.
I believe the Brazilian educational model makes a mistake. It promotes contact with children’s and young adult literature and then, years later, forces the reading of works such as those by the wonderful writer Machado de Assis.
The problem is that, in between, school and literature collide with adolescence at its most critical stage. Starting with encouragement to read, then abandoning it, and later returning with mandatory reading creates literary aversion in many young people. This often carries into adult life, leading to difficulties in reading and writing within academic settings.
This explains, in large part, why in Brazil there are still postgraduate advisors who encounter unbelievable writing errors in students at the higher education level. Reading is essential to writing. There is absolutely no possibility of writing without reading, just as there is no way to speak without knowing how to listen.
What we cannot forget is that reading, far more than a habit, is a guarantee of mental health. The importance of reading for the elderly in preventing or delaying the onset or progression of degenerative neurological diseases is well established.
Training inductive reasoning is of fundamental importance in maintaining mental health and other brain functions. In this way, the brain protects itself from cognitive decline, because even at an advanced age neurons continue to renew themselves.
Reading books, newspapers, or even a simple crossword puzzle magazine, as my parents usually do — what matters is understanding that written words, since the most ancient civilizations in the world, possess a timeless power that makes life more meaningful and exciting.
Returning to 1999, I eventually came to understand a phrase spoken by Claude C. Hopkins, one of the pioneers of global advertising, in which he says: “We learn, for example, that curiosity is one of the strongest human motivators.”
And to you who have just managed to read all these words, and who do not usually read regularly, but decided to read my text today,
I propose a moment of self-questioning:
Where is that curious child you once were?
