1400 years ago, somewhere in the middle east, a guy about 40 was pissed with the barbaric people around him. He couldn’t take it anymore and retreat to a cave. In it, he prayed to a higher power asking for help. Strangely, God did come to him. But, God did not come to equip him with X-Men superpowers. Instead, with a simple order: read.
The guy is Muhammad. The first verse revealed is an order to read, without an object. It says “Read! in the name of your Lord who created.” Read what? Anything. Read what is written and what is not. Read people, situations, cues. Read before you talk, read before you click.
Reading will give you many lives. As your ideas and imagination meet with others’. This is similar to a person sitting between two mirrors. He did not see only one picture of himself, not only two but countless. That’s what reading does to you. When you eat, you can only fulfil one stomach. Whatever you dress, you could only cover one body. Wherever you travel, you can only be in one place at a time. But when you read, you associate various ideas, tastes, and imagination.
You live many lives.
