I was never a serious student from my childhood. I grew up amongst the people who were mediocre and had simple easy thoughts towards life. I was never a serious reader and I never use to read books. Life takes its turns and life presents you some situations and opportunities which change your life radically. Your life, your thought patterns and your ideologies gets radically questioned by few small things which have drastic effects. I too had my share of incidences of such sort.
one of those turn of events came when I was in engg.Once my 2 year celebration of my freedom which I gained away from home died and the euphoria subsided I saw that life was becoming very mundane and bland. I started to questions a lot of things but I never was able to find answers to those questions. Some things led to another and I happened to read an autobiography of mahatma gandhi.that book to me was a life changer.
It made me introspect much deeply, it made me see where I am and what am I here for.that was one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read.
Today I want to talk about one more book which has left a long lasting impression on me. What my ideologies are today and what I believe today I owe to that writer.
I am talking about Ayn Rand and her book Atlas Shrugged. The book is 1000 pages long and it’s a fiction. The book revolves around a person Henry Reardon who is a very hard working, industrious and capitalist mill owner. The plot revolves around the philosophy of Ayn Rand about objectivity, greed, ego, selfishness, rationality, ethics etc.
Reardon is a person of values and ethics and he is inner driven and not outer driven unlike others. He lives his life on the very fundamental tenets of objective reality and reason. His ideas are too high, standards too lofty and he is hell bent and resolute is guiding his life based on the principles set by him instead of being submissive to a force smacking of lack of reason.
The book taught me a lot of things which has philosophical impinge and my perspectives towards everything are shaped by Ayn Rand.
I would like to mind the readers that this book is not just a case in point but it has sold millions of copies throughout the world. There is even a term called ‘Randian’ Philosophy. I am always amazed and happy to see her fan following and her being a subject of discussion even after her death. When anyone reads Ayn Rand he will not be just walking through a story but doing time travel, he is giving his mind a shape and a food for thought. It’s no wonder that the former Fed Reserve Chairman Mr. Alan Greenspan was one of the great loyalists of Ayn Rand he implemented a lot of capitalist policies based on his understandings of Ayn Rand's philosophy.
I sometimes think that why don’t people read books. There is so much to know in the world and there is so little time with us even then consciously we waste our time.for me reading books is not a passion but has become a more incorrigible disease called obsession. I can’t quote anything better than this which I read in book ‘NAMESAKE’, "you can travel the whole world without moving an inch”, that’s what books can do magic on us.I think sometimes that I have wasted so much previous times of my yesteryears, had I been a reading books since long past I’d been a better person.
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