The Endangered “Reading Filipino” Species

I love reading. Or maybe it’s an understatement; I think I’m addicted to it. I rarely drop by at bookstores without purchasing at least one book. For me, it is an investment where the returns are in multitudes for a lifetime.  I don’t have discrimination on what to read. As long as it captures my interest, I’ll definitely grab it. My collections aren’t all that serious stuffs. There are even comic books in it. My first reading addiction by the way is with Filipino komiks that my mom bought weekly.

Many think that a person who reads much has this sense of confidence for knowing a lot of things. But in contrast, more reading comes with the realization that human knows very little of this world and that there’s still a lot to explore; thus the hunger to read more. The more books read the more intellectually humble a person becomes. While for those who read a few and contented with the knowledge they gain from it are actually those who are endangered being trapped in the thinking that they almost know everything. Thus with the saying “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Probably, this is the main reason why we now have a lot of opinionated Filipinos who lack sound judgment and proper balance on their views. We now have less Filipino readers. This is a sad truth to what historian Ambeth Ocampo exclaimed, that “Rizal wrote a lot for a nation that does not read.”

During the yesteryears, reading was just a normal activity as what watching TV to this generation is. And now, I’m saddened by the fact that it is being regarded differently by some; three things, first as a trend, second as a status symbol and lastly as a total nuisance or waste of time.

A lot of people now read certain books simply because it’s the “in” thing. It’s like a genre that they aren’t even interested before but suddenly have the urge to read it because a lot of people already were. Bandwagon. Well at least, it might bring hope to those who were previously non-readers to have an interest in reading other types of books other than those which are “in”.  I hope that they don’t just treat reading as a fad, because fad fades.

Reading as a status symbol is another “culture” that is slowly creeping in to the Filipino’s subconscious. Some think and act that reading is only for certain social classes, intellects, professions, etc. Reading is for everybody and it should stay that way.

And worst than those two are the people who thinks reading is just a waste of time. And then goes saying that lessons can be learnt better on living their daily lives. I agree that valuable lessons in life can be learned by experiencing it. But isn’t it that most books share the experiences and lessons that the authors gained for the readers’ consumption? It’s better to learn from the mistakes of others rather than experience it again myself.

History tells us how reading changed our country in the past. Books, novels, propagandas that were read by people then changed the landscape of this country, mostly for good but some for bad. There were even times that our people were deprived the liberty to read the materials of their choice but now that we have that freedom, we seemed not so interested in taking advantage of it. There were also decades that reading is the number one past time and the primary source of entertainment of our populace, but that part of history is now long gone.

Like a pre-historic animal, those parts of our history are now extinct. The probability for them to be brought back is close to zero. For the animals maybe by DNA cloning or something artificial but naturally, it’s close to impossible. But reading is not totally dead. It’s not yet extinct, just endangered. We still have time to save reading as part of the normal Filipino lives. So while some people are shouting “save the dolphins”, “save the eagles”, “save the forest”, let me say “save the ‘reading Filipino specie’ from extinction”!



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