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Minimalist blog for random writing / Rushd Bitar

The train that changed my life

May 11, 2020 — ~rushd
During my stay in Germany (2011-2012), I had to live in a far town from the college, and I had to make this daily trip from Langen to Darmstadt back and forth. I was mostly spending my moments in the quiet train looking out from the window. First day was fine, a week passed and that's fine. But after a while, I was very bored looking at the same scene over and over everyday. I also tried to change my seat to the other window just for a change!

Looking around me inside the train, I was watching other people to learn from their daily routines and how they manage to get over the boredom. They are always reading a book. No one is reading a newspaper.. Just books. So I wanted to try this out. Can I change my daily routine to be as useful and productive as theirs?

I went to the nearest bookstore and searched for books for a long time, Unfortunately, only German books are available. I knew some German, but I can't read a book without looking up for new vocabulary and this won't support my routine change! I found a small booklet for sudoku game, so I just bought that.
I spent a week solving sudoku, I was very slow at first, but then I created my own strategy and solved all the booklet within one week!
I went to Frankfurt which was a nearby international city and visited a bookstore there and was able to find some English books. From that moment, I started to read. I was 25 years old.
It was very late to start reading books at 25. The more I read, the worse I feel about being ignorant before. It changed my life to the better in multiple directions. I would like to state the changes in points:

  1. Entertainment: The books put you in a virtual world, just like a dream, or even a virtual reality game where you feel that you travelled somewhere else for free!
  2. Information: Academic information which I used to have in my textbooks are nothing. Real information are in real non academic books.
  3. Clone: It's very easy when you want to setup some thoughts in your mind. You don't need to do that from scratch. You will find others doing something and build on it. Read a book, clone the idea, fork it !
  4. Mind Twist: Change the way you think by time. Even though you can't remember all the things you read, but it actually resides inside your subconcious mind, and change the way you think forever.
  5. International: If you are an open minded person, you can't do that without reading books. You will find thousands of contradictive ideas that would blow your mind!
  6. Problem Solving: We all have problems in our lives. Nobody has an ideal platonic life! Even a small novel can help your brain to reconnect its nerves for a better thinking and problem solving.
  7. More and more: More answers you find in books pop up more questions in your head and direct you to read more books.. it's endless..