Books maketh a man. The legendary Francis Bacon laid down the maxim reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. For him everything that could be read was inspiring and motivational. In the recent past there is a new category of writers who have held fort as motivational writers leading to some of these books becoming best sellers.
The prompt on the Indiblogger site by Vartika Gopal inspired this post. First google the best motivational books and one site listed ten of the must read ones. None in fact had caught the attention of yours truly till this time. The question then was as to whether one could comment on the usefulness of these books without reading them.
Robin Sharma's The Monk who sold his Ferrari and Who will cry when you die are probably the feeblest attempts to read the motivational category of books. However, books by themselves are motivating. Gandhi held the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata close to his heart. The Bhagvad Gita which inspired him does not figure in this list. Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, Menachem Begin's The Revolt or Tolstoy's War and Peace which inspired a mind like Nelson Mandela do not find a place in this category. The Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi which inspired Martin Luther King or his I have a Dream which inspired Barrack Obama do not find as much as a mention under this category.
The solace is that while the story of Rip Van Winkle inspired Martin Luther King to chase a dream, it had also inspired me to consider sleep to be a gift of God. This revelation drove home the fact that any book can inspire a mind which is willing to act and not be even a source of unwinding for many others. The inspiration I have derived from the Panchatantra, the Jataka Tales, or from stories of Birbal and Tenali Rama are no less.
The difference lies in the reader. Can he absorb and motivate himself by any book or search for a book which will bear the label inspiring is a choice of the reader. No book or writing can be ignored. They are inspiring if the mind is receptive. After all, the Bhagvad Gita was not propounded in isolation though directed at Arjuna intended for all to appreciate. An Arjuna grasps the potential while Bhishma savours it from a distance the rest of the multitude is immersed in the material thought as to why the war is being deferred.
After all it is not for nothing that George Harrision penned :It's all in the mind.
Once the mind tunes to the content of the writing then the import is grasped and it has its benefits let alone uses.
1 comment:
The books that inspired the likes of Gandhi, Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. could be the real inspiring books. In fact, the contents of these books in their diluted form, must be the stuff of many so called best seller motivational books.
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