Certificate of Participation Part III: Reading
Dear July,
We are somehow already bidding goodbye to the first half of the year.
At the beginning of 2026, I made a small New Year’s resolution to read twelve books — one each month. Well… I somehow ended up on my 26th book now.
It seems that I am incapable of doing anything in moderation and perhaps learning not to overachieve should become one of my resolutions for 2027.
So why reading?
I often find myself wondering how much I do not know. The world is simply too big, and there is so much that I don’t know I don’t know. In a strange way, books have become a source of reassurance for me. Every meaningful book reminds me that someone else has wrestled with the same questions before, and generously left behind what they learnt.
Reading has become one of my favourite ways of understanding both the world and myself. Every meaningful book allows us to borrow another person’s lifetime. In just a few hundred pages, we inherit decades of questions, mistakes, observations, and wisdom that would otherwise have taken a lifetime to discover ourselves.
Books have become one of the ways I participate in life. Through them, I meet people I would never have met, ask questions I would never have thought to ask, and borrow perspectives I could never have lived on my own.
To everyone who has been following my reflections this year, I thought I’d do something a little different.
Instead of another reflection, here’s a small gift:
A collection of the nine books (out of the twenty-six I read this year) that have stayed with me the most, the ones that quietly shaped the way I think, create, love, and live.
Below is a collection of quotes and ideas that have stayed with me from these books.
ART
Art creates a profound connection between the artist and the audience. Through that connection, both can heal
Being an artist is about how and why you touch people’s lives, even if it’s one person, even if that’s yourself in the process of art making
Art does beyond language, beyond lives. It’s a universal way to send messages between each other and through time
LIFE AND HAPPINESS
Happiness is the by-product of being in the right relationship with your own soul at that moment
Tension is who you think you should be , relaxation is who you are
When you are young, you have time, you have health. When you are middle aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once. By the time people realize they have enough money, they’ve lost their time and their health
Confucius say you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one
Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again
Rilke’s letters to a Young Poet, where the Young Poet is saying: “Give me the answers, give me the answers” Rilke said: you ‘re not ready to live the answers. He said, You have to live the questions, until some distant day when you live your way into the answers that are right for you. I can give you answers right now, but they don’t work for you necessarily. What works for you? Well that’s for you to figure out (There is no easy way out, we all have to live the questions to find the answers)
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. People often misunderstand that quote, they think it means becoming someone new. No, its not, it means gradually removing everything that isn’t you
CAREER AND MONEY
If you can’t see yourself working with someone for life, don’t work with them for a day
Does this path, this relationship, this career enlarge or diminish me? We usually know the answer to that question. We know it in our gut. (We just refuse to admit it at times)
Earn with your mind, not your time
Reading is the ultimate meta-skill and can be traded for anything else. Reading 1-2 hours a day puts you in the top 0.00001 percent
ADULTS, CHILDREN, HUMANS
We are all but older children, dear - who now fret to find our bed time near
The greatest burden that a child must wear is the unlived life of their parents
The only thing parents can do for their children is to live their lives as fully as they can, for this will open up the children’s imagination, grant permission to them to have their own journey and open the doors of possibility for them
LOVE AND EMOTIONS
Love is given, not received
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it
How it happens that only in looking for words do we find our thoughts (This is why writing / journalling helps us process our emotions better)
And if there’s one more thing I must say to you - it is this: don’t think that the person who is trying to comfort you now lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes give you pleasure. His life has much trouble and sadness, and remains far behind yours. If it were otherwise, he would never been able to find those words” (This one pierced my heart - It made me wonder about every person who has ever comforted me during difficult seasons. Perhaps the gentlest words often come from those who have quietly suffered too)
Most people believe that love is constituted by the object, not by the faculty. Because one does not see that love is an activity, a power of the soul, one believes that all is necessary to find is the right object - and that everything goes by itself afterword. This attitude can be compared to that of a man who wants to paint, but who instead of learning the art, claims that he has just to wait for the right object and that he will paint beautifully when he finds it. If I truly love one person, I love all persons, I love the world, I love life. If I can say to somebody else, “I love you”, I must be able to say : “I love you in everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself” - (Love is an art and practice. It is not something we simply find. Like art, it is something we practise. It asks for patience, discipline, humility, and courage. Perhaps loving well is an art in itself.)
Final thoughts from myself in this season:
The right people will not make you fall in love with them, the right people will make you fall in love with life, with precious little moments, and with yourself again and again. And.. let’s find these people and cherish them to our heart.
Thank you to every author who quietly became a companion this year.
And thank you, as always, for reading alongside me.
Happy reading. I hope one of these books finds you at exactly the right time.
