How to Read Effectively for a Reading Comprehension Test?

If you are worried about a reading comprehension test, if it scares you, and if you guess your answers in a reading comprehension test, this blog post will inform you of some extremely useful strategies to overcome these issues.

There are mainly two ways of approaching a reading comprehension test in most situations. Some read the text first and then read the questions. This is not an amazingly effective way of attempting a reading comprehension test. The second method involves reading the questions first and then reading the text. In this way, the questions sink into the subconscious and while you read the text, they will give your mind some indication of what is going to come in the text and as soon as it comes, your mind gives you a signal that there is a question about this section. Whatever way of approaching a comprehension is convenient for you, stick to that because different methods work for different people. However, whatever method you apply, you have to read and understand the text because without understanding the text, a reading comprehension cannot be completed successfully. In this article, you will learn how to read the text effectively and actively.

Step 1

Have a look at the text and skim it, which means that you look over a text quickly to get the general idea of it. You do not need to read every word. Just pick out key words and sentences. This will give you a brief idea of what the text is about and prepare your mind to gather any information stored in the subconscious to be used readily. This is more like a churning process and the mind is incredibly good at bringing out the cream—relevant information— to the surface regarding any given topic.

Step 2

Now that you have an idea what the text is about, your mind will also engage in educated or informed guessing while you are reading the text. It will give you the meanings of difficult words in their specific context. However, sometimes, there is a word that is totally new for you, and you cannot get any sense of it even with reference to its context. Stop, and quickly find its meaning in a dictionary and write that on the text, in the margins. Sometimes, these are key words and without knowing their meaning, it is impossible to make an accurate sense of the text. Making a text ‘dirty’ with your notes and annotations is extremely crucial for a deeper comprehension. A clean text indicates lack of engagement, which, in turn, means either minimal or no understanding at all. Do not try to read closely at this stage. Your target is to remove the cognitive hindrances from your way at this stage by finding the meaning of difficult words. You also increase your vocabulary by doing so, and a greater vocabulary is equivalent to a successful completion of a reading comprehension test.

Step 3

Once you have written the meanings of all the difficult words that blocked your understanding, read the text closely now and this time annotate the text i.e., underline, circle, write notes in the margins about any specific language, organisational techniques or anything that strikes you. Do all this using only one pen. Do not highlight because highlighting is equivalent to no engagement with the text because it does not actively involve your input on a writer’s ideas or viewpoints.[i]

Step 4

Now try to summarise every paragraph into four to five words. Remember that the first or the second sentence of a paragraph is the topic sentence which determines what the paragraph is about. Once you know the topic of a paragraph, it is easy to summarise it. Moreover, when you summarise a paragraph into four or five words, it must be so easy that even a small child could understand it. For example: ‘benefits of playing football’, ‘disadvantages of eating unhealthy food’, ‘reasons for climate change’, are some of the examples that can give you an idea of what your summary should look like.

Step 5

Try to create a video in your head of what you have read. You can create a video of each paragraph. In this way, you will never forget it, at least until you have done the questions. Creating a video is important to remember because the language of our mind is images, moving or static, not words. Therefore, when you create a video, you basically are feeding your mind with information in its native language. To understand this better, imagine speaking English to an Italian or a French or an Arabic who knows no English. Would there be any comprehension? Not at all. However, if you speak to that person in his or her native language, he or she would understand easily. In the same way, speak to the mind in the language that it understands.

Step 6

Go back to the questions now and then write your answers. Use scanning technique, which means hunt for a specific information e.g., dates, data, names etc., to find your answers quickly. You already know in which paragraphs your answers are.

Practise these techniques on a regular basis and you will improve your reading comprehension accuracy and speed tremendously.

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[i] Read my article titled Active Reading: The Key to Educational Success in which I have discussed some of the key disadvantages of highlighting while reading. 

Active Reading: The Key to Educational Success

Reading is widely regarded as a passive process, and this is where the fault lies. Unfortunately, a large part of the edifice of pre-tertiary education is built on this fault line which is vulnerable to eruption. Educators, particularly in these times of sizzling frenzy of technology, always complain that students do not read and even if they do, they do not understand. This means we are not effective readers because today’s students are tomorrow’s educators. Reading is a very much active process, even more active than writing. Until and unless, we change our dogmas towards reading and teach it as an active process, we cannot initiate a useful, effective change in students today and in our society down the line. This article emphasises the importance of active reading and outlines the methods to engage in active reading process for a better understanding of a given text, a useful tool for success in any educational setting.

First and foremost, we need to debunk the myth that reading is a passive process. The idea that reading is a passive process germinates from the misconception that it involves only the eyes to move across the text while the brain processes the words. In reality, reading involves complex cognitive mechanisms such as decoding words, comprehending their meaning, making inferences, and relating the content to the reader’s existing knowledge. Based on these mechanisms, the reader actively constructs meaning, asks questions, draws connections and conclusions, and most importantly engages in critical thinking about the material. In this way, reading is an interactive process between the reader and the text. Moreover, the reader often brings his or her own experiences, emotions, and prior knowledge to the act of reading, which determines the way he or she may interpret and understand the material. This makes reading a dynamic and deeply personalised experience, far from being a passive activity.

During the course of educational journey, students have to read extensively. In today’s print and online world, sometimes it is a Herculean task to narrow down one’s search from a wide array of resources to the most relevant ones. Using skimming and scanning skills, one can hunt down resources for a guaranteed success. These skills involve looking over an abstract, an introduction, a blurb and flipping through the pages quickly and scanning down the page to catch some key information, dates, numerical data etc. In this process, the eye catches sight of key words and information, which can determine whether the material is worth further reading or not. Based on your skimming and scanning, you can make a decision whether to select that source for deeper reading or discard it and move on to the next one. This process can enable you to shortlist the most relevant materials for you in a short time.

After choosing what to read, the next step is active reading, where you shift from skimming and scanning to fully engaging with the text. There are some fundamental features of active reading that are explained here. Note-taking is the skill that involves a reader’s active participation in the process of reading, comprehending and retaining. Note-taking involves a thoughtful awareness of what you are doing and why. As you keep reading, make notes along the way and reflect on those so you can develop your own techniques. The idea is to make note-taking an individual activity, specific to you only. Note-taking could be performed on the text itself, if you own the book. However, if it is a borrowed book, taking notes in your notebook is the only moral option. Engage with the text, play with the text, annotate the text, and raise questions for a better understanding. It is imperative to remember that active reading is like a face-to-face debate in which one argues, counterargues, agrees, disagrees, approves, disapproves, convinces or gets convinced. Ask yourself questions, for example, why is something happening, who is involved, why are they involved, what is the purpose of the text, who is the audience, where does it happen, when does it happen, what is the context and how does it affect you or does it affect you at all or not. Such cross questioning seems more like an active investigation of a criminal in the court or at a police station, but that is the most effective way to get the maximum out of a text. Along with such active questioning, keep on predicting because active reading is also an informed guessing game: what is about to happen, who would be affected, what would be the outcome and how will it impact you. Remember that a text is exactly like a person with whom you interact, and all of these techniques to extract information are a common practice in our day to day lives. Therefore, a text is a living entity as it is written by a living being. Along with that, it is a great idea to summarise in your own words whatever you have understood. It is important to understand and acknowledge that the aim of active reading is not to remember, but to understand. The irony is that when you understand, you remember as well. Therefore, it is a ‘buy one get one free’ package.

When you read actively as outlined in the previous paragraph, you will gather a considerable amount of information. The next stage in active reading process is to organise your information, your notes, in a way that it is effectively and readily accessible to you when you want to dispense it. When you take notes, reference them by adding page number(s) of the source and its author along with the date so you can establish links later on. This is a very personalised process, and everyone could employ different ways of organising their notes. The crucial thing is to organise them.

It must be remembered that active reading does not involve highlighting, as most school students are encouraged to do so. Research has proved that highlighting does more damage than benefit. Although highlighting has become a widespread disease, studies indicate that it provides no advantage beyond simply reading the text with a false hope that one is doing a lot of cognitive work. Contrary to this misconception, some research even suggests that highlighting may hinder the learning process because it draws attention to individual facts, it may hamper the process of making connections and drawing inferences. In order to understand the negative impact of highlighting, we must understand the working mechanism of the brain. Highlighting sends visual input into our brain upon which the brain restricts the focus to the highlighted segments only, ignoring other, sometimes more important parts of a text. In this way, we limit our ideas to the highlighted segments where our attention is forced to engage without an overall comprehensive understanding. The act of highlighting also gives us a false impression of engagement. However, technically speaking, you get engaged with a text when you input your ideas, thoughts or feelings—in the form of notes or annotations—in response to what is written by someone else.

You must remember that a written piece means someone’s thoughts, feelings and ideas. That someone could be different from you in many ways or in some ways. Therefore, when you interact with a text [which is equivalent to interacting with someone], keep agreeing or disagreeing, keep challenging, keep analysing, keep predicting, keep thinking critically and most importantly: keep taking notes. Not only this, keep reflecting about how you should take notes because it evolves until it reaches a stage where it seems the perfect note taking practice. If you are engaging with a text in this manner, you are an active reader.

 

 

 

Shakespeare Authorship Question

Much has been written about Shakespeare’s so-called authorship controversy, however, celebrated Shakespearean scholars unanimously agree that Shakespeare’s works were written by William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. This blogpost highlights some key historical records, Shakespeare’s contemporaries’ views, and the origins of this controversy in order to provide an insight to readers outside the realm of academia, who may be unfamiliar with intricate details.

Historical Records

First of all, no one ‘in Shakespeare’s lifetime or for the first two hundred years after his death expressed the slightest doubt about his authorship’.[i] It is very interesting that Shakespeare’s closest associates, friends, critics and contemporaries, who knew him, who witnessed his work and who collaborated with him, acknowledged him as the greatest playwright, either by offering their eulogies or by vehement criticism. However, those who doubted his authorship, two centuries later, had notoriously thin documentation to support their claims. Their claims also disregard the validity of the immediate witnesses’ testimony. When the motives behind such claims are examined, it becomes clear why such claims gain popularity.

Secondly, ‘it is well known that Queen Elizabeth was a great admirer of the immortal Shakespeare’[ii] who wrote and performed in front of her and on her demand at times. When Earl of Essex tried to raise a rebellion to overthrow the Queen, he paid huge amount of money to Shakespeare’s company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to stage Richard II to ignite Londoners’ sentiments against Elizabeth. The Queen reportedly said to William Lambarde, ‘I am Richard II. Know ye not that?’[iii] Following Essex’s unsuccessful attempt, Shakespeare’s company was questioned by the government agents, however, they claimed ignorance of Essex’s intentions and maintained that they were motivated by financial gains in staging the play. Essex was executed and ‘on the very eve of Essex’s execution, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were back performing a play before the queen and the court at Whitehall.’[iv] Elizabeth, who was obsessed with state security and she spent ‘£12,000 a year—a fabulous sum—spying on its own citizens’, could not have been ignorant of Shakespeare’s identity as a writer and player.[v] She would have invited someone else to perform before her if she had any doubts about him.  

Thirdly, historical records show that in the Masters of the Revels account of 1604-5, which is the record of the plays performed before King James I, ‘Shakespeare is named seven times as the author of plays performed before James I’.[vi] Moreover, according to Bryson, ‘Shakespeare’s company performed 187 times before the King, more than all other acting troupes put together’.[vii] King James became the patron of Shakespeare’s company, which then became The King’s Men. These privileges could not have been showered on Shakespeare and his company if the King believed that Shakespeare was not the author and player.

Shakespeare’s Contemporaries About Shakespeare

As mentioned earlier, the most credible testimonies about Shakespeare’s authorship come from his contemporaries. It is illogical and unscientific to reject these immediate validations which stood their ground for more than two hundred years and accept fraudulent William Henry Ireland and mentally unstable Delia Bacon’s claims regarding Shakespeare’s authorship.

Ben Jonson, in his poem To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare, prefacing the 1623 Folio of Shakespeare’s works exclaims: ‘He was not of an age, but for all time!’[viii] Jonson does not seem to entertain any doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship and ironically, uses the word ‘Author’ as if foreseeing the controversy to come. Why did Jonson not bestow such praise on his other friends? Why did he not say this for Marlowe? Why only Shakespeare? Why would he say so if he knew that Shakespeare was not a writer? An interesting fact: Jonson, a bricklayer once who never attended a university and never completed his schooling, does not have a Jonson authorship question, but Shakespeare does. Other prefatory poems in the same 1623 Folio also establish Shakespeare as an author and poet. Hugh Holland pays tribute to Shakespeare by recognising him a ‘Famous…poet, master’, and Leonard Digges testifies that he was an ‘authour’ and ‘Maister’.[ix]

Secondly, John Webster (1578-1632), Shakespeare’s friend and contemporary and the writer of The Duchess of Malfi, calls him the greatest playwright in the preface to The White Devil. Most critics agree that Webster collaborated with Shakespeare. How could Webster call him the greatest playwright if Shakespeare did not write the plays? His testimony carries more weight than those claims which took birth in the nineteenth century.

Thirdly, Francis Meres (1566-1647), Shakespeare’s contemporary, in his book Palladis Tamia Wits Treasury Being The Second Part Of Wits Common Wealth (1598) lists more than a dozen of Shakespeare’s early plays and declares him ‘the most excellent in both kinds [comedy and tragedy] for the stage’ while comparing him with the Greek writers, who were widely respected as the torchbearers in the genre of play-writing.[x]

On the other hand, Robert Greene, who was a snobbishly bitter critic of Shakespeare, indirectly declares him the author of his works by calling him ‘Johannes Factotum [Jack of all trades, universal genius, a Mr Do-it-all]’ and an ‘upstart crow’ in his pamphlet Groat-worth of Wit (1592), a work that is only known for attacking Shakespeare.[xi] He hated Shakespeare because, in his own words, ‘Shakespeare had put the scholar playwrights out of business’.[xii] Although out of his professional jealousy, he criticises Shakespeare, he still recognises that he put them out of business because of his playwriting prowess. Only a playwright, not a merchant in wool or timber, could have put the scholarly playwrights out of business. Greene could have said that the Bard did not write anything at all out of his hatred, but he was jealous not a liar. These are only a few testimonies straight from the horse’s mouth to determine Shakespeare’s authorship.

University Wits Myth Debunked

There is another claim made by Anti-Stratfordian school of thought that the plays could not have been written by a countryman like Shakespeare, not educated enough to write such glorious works. In order to write such wonderful works, as they claim, one needs university education because his works cover a plethora of ideas, topics, themes, that a countryman could not handle. Such a claim has no firm ground to stand on. The Anti-Stratfordians imply that someone from the university wits, a group of playwrights and pamphleteers who studied at Oxford and Cambridge universities, might have written these plays. If university education was the only criteria to be a successful writer like Shakespeare, then why were the university wits not as successful as Shakespeare? They should have been more popular, and their works should have been more wonderful than Shakespeare’s. Outside the literary circle, very few people can tell the names of the so-called university wits; almost none can tell who studied at which university without searching it online, and what are the titles of some of their works. Marlowe could be an exception, but Marlowe was a ‘forced’ university graduate which will be discussed shortly. On the other hand, Shakespeare is well known not only in literary circles but almost in every circle of life. Scholars as well as common people can name his works, his characters and remember some of his lines from his works.

Let us look at some of the university wits and see what their accomplishments in the realm of literature are, without any intention of undermining their works and writing talents. They produced some great work, but not comparable in greatness to Shakespeare’s work. Here the yardstick is Shakespeare’s work against which they are judged. Robert Greene, a Cambridge graduate, is mostly known for calling Shakespeare’s an ‘upstart crow’. The statue of his reputation stands on Shakespearean pedestal. His prose romance Pandosto was unknown. Shakespeare reworked it and turned it into The Winter’s Tale, thus giving it an eternal life. A countryman turning the lost, unknown work of a university genius into a masterpiece! Greene was right when he said that Shakespeare had put them out of business.

Next is Marlowe who stayed at Cambridge for some six years and at the end was refused an MA degree because he did not attend his course. He was a British spy and spent most of his time on espionage missions. ‘The Privy Council of England wrote (to the university) to say that he had done Her Majesty good service and deserved to be rewarded for his faithful dealings. So, he got his M.A.’[xiii] In this way, he got his MA owing to the special efforts of his spy master and homosexual-lover, Sir Francis Walsingham. Therefore, he should not even be considered as a university graduate if the Privy Council forced the university to confer degrees upon him, and he, like Shakespeare, should also be vulnerable to authorship controversy. But no one doubts that Marlowe’s works were written by Marlowe himself. Secondly, how could he write The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus without having a university education if that is the argument brought forward to dismiss Shakespeare’s authorship?

Apart from Marlowe and Greene, other university wits, for example, Thomas Nashe (Cambridge), Thomas Lodge and George Peele (Oxford) and Thomas Kyd, who was not university trained, were not as successful in their literary careers as Shakespeare was. All of the university wits died penniless. On the other hand, it is an established fact that Shakespeare was a successful writer and entrepreneur who bought the biggest house in Stratford owing to his enormous success. If university education were the sole criteria, the university wits would have been more successful and financially more stable than Shakespeare.

To put things in perspective for a better understanding, let us look at some examples of the most successful people in history who did not attend a university to determine whether anyone can achieve success without a university education or not. Starting with towering literary figures, Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells and Mark Twain are known for the excellence of their works. All of them did not have a university education. In many countries, their works are part of the curriculum which speaks volumes about their unparallel brilliance.

Next, if we look at world leaders, Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of the USA was born into utter poverty, self-educated himself and then rose to the highest position in his country and became a source of inspiration for many in the field of politics and leadership.

In business, Richard Branson, British business magnate, the owner of more than four hundred companies, did not have a university education, but his business acumen made him a successful entrepreneur. Similarly, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are not university graduates.

If we look at the biographies of some of the most iconic scientists who are known for their extra ordinary works, they did not even have a science degree, yet they achieved what no one with a university degree has yet achieved. Leonardo Da Vinci, the creator of Mona Lisa, was a scientist, theorist, sculptor, painter and mathematician who did not have a science degree. Similarly, Michael Faraday and Charles Darwin did not have a science degree. Thomas Edison, best known for inventing the light bulb and as the greatest inventor of all time, did not have a science degree. He has 1093 patents to his name, a feat which has not yet been yet surpassed by any one, with or without a university degree.

These examples are the tip of an iceberg, which shout at the top of their lungs that one does not need a university education to be successful. Shakespeare’s case against this backdrop, seems more plausible.

The Origins of the Authorship Controversy

Before we dig into the origins of the Anti-Stratfordian controversy, it should be noted that propaganda and sensationalism spread very fast, particularly if they carry lucrative financial incentives, which makes more sense in today’s world where things go ‘viral’. These two diseases sell like hot cakes and turn people into millionaires. The same thing happened to the authorship controversy.

Jonathan Bate in his book The Genius of Shakespeare (1997) writes that in 1795, Samuel Ireland, an English Author, and his son William Henry Ireland claimed that they had original manuscripts of Shakespeare’s plays with his signatures. They published the manuscripts in a four-hundred-page book which sold five hundred copies of that pricey book within the first forty-eight hours.[xiv] People started flooding to their residence to view those manuscripts. Later on, Shakespeare’s scholar Edmond Malone examined those manuscripts and declared them all fake and a gross act of forgery. This incident changed Shakespeare into a sellable commodity, which saw the birth of Shakespeare industry that gave people an idea that anything controversial about Shakespeare could be extremely beneficial. The Ireland episode fermented the germs of the birth of the authorship controversy.

Secondly, Delia Bacon, an American who claimed to be Sir Francis Bacon’s descendent, wrote in her book The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded (1857) that ‘ignorant, low-bred, vulgar country fellow, who had never inhaled in all his life one breath of that social atmosphere that fills his plays’ could not write those wonderful works.[xv] She implied that the works must have been written by an aristocrat, proposing Francis Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spencer as potential candidates. However, she wished that it were Francis Bacon more than anyone else. Her argument rests on the theory that the works contain stories of the lives of the upper class, forgetting about the fact that almost every playwright in Shakespeare’s time, whose name has not been dragged into authorship controversy, wrote about courts, royals and the upper class. Shakespeare’s works also contain stories of the lower class and Ms Bacon miserably failed to address how an aristocrat could accurately depict the lower class, their lives, and their language if he did not ever inhale one breath of that social atmosphere. Anyhow, such limbless and truncated arguments are part and parcel of all those claims related to the authorship controversy.

The controversy gained further momentum when in 1853 she raised funds, thanks for her sensationalist sympathisers in America, for a visit to England where she spent three years writing her controversial book. In 1856, she decided to spend a night in Holy Trinity Church with a lantern and tools, planning to dig Shakespeare’s grave in the hope of finding some manuscripts or any other proof to confirm her theory. As she was not feeling well, she could not materialise the idea. Stanley Wells writes that Delia Bacon believed that she was not Delia Bacon but ‘the Holy Ghost and surrounded by devils’, which reflects her mental instability.[xvi] She died of insanity in an asylum in 1859. Her death gave birth to an English Bacon Society who believed that it was Francis Bacon who wrote Shakespeare’s works.

Conclusion

As of now, the most influential Shakespeare scholars, for examples, Sir Stanley Wells, Sir Jonathan Bate, Helen Hackett, Bill Bryson, James Shapiro, Emrys Jones, Lynn Enterline and Ivor Brown strongly believe that it was William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon who wrote his works. Regarding the authorship controversy, Bate says:

The desire to kill off William of Stratford is only a mark of the power of William of Stratford. It follows that, paradoxical as it may seem, in order to have the genius of Shakespeare, we also have to have the Authorship Controversy.[xvii]

 

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[i] Bate, Jonathan, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), p. 181.

[ii] Waugaman, Richard M., ‘The Psychology of Shakespearean Biography’, Brief Chronicles: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Authorship Studies, 1, (2009), 29-39, (p. 37).

[iii] Bate, Jonathan, Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare (London: Viking, 2008), p. 281.

[iv] Bate, Jonathan, Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare (London: Viking, 2008), p. 281.

[v] Bryson, Bill, Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 90.

[vi] Bryson, Bill, Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 181.

[vii] Bryson, Bill, Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), p. 132.

[viii] Shakespeare, William, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies (London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623), p. A4v.

[ix] Shakespeare, William, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies, Published According to the True Originall Copies (London: Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, 1623), pp. A5r, A6r.

[x] Meres, Francis, Palladis Tamia Wits Treasury Being the Second Part of Wits Common Wealth (London, Printed by P. Short, 1598), p. 281.

[xi] Wood, Michael, In Search of Shakespeare (London: BBC, 2003), p.144; Vickers, Brian, '"Upstart Crow?" The Myth of Shakespeare’s Plagiarism', The Review of English Studies 68.284 (2017), 244-67 (p.249).

[xii] Sutherland, James and Joel Hurstfield, eds, Shakespeare’s World (London: Arnold, 1964) p. 18.

[xiii] Brown, Ivor, Shakespeare in His Time (London: Nelson, 1960), p. 172.

[xiv] Bate, Jonathan, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), pp. 83-86.

[xv] Wells, Stanley, Shakespeare for All Time (London: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 314-315.

[xvi] Wells, Stanley, Shakespeare for All Time (London: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 314-316.

[xvii] Bate, Jonathan, The Genius of Shakespeare (London: Picador, 1997), p. 97.

‘Shall I Compare Thee…?'

Shall I compare a black life with a white life, a white life with a brown life and a brown life with a yellow life? Shall I compare different lives to ascertain which life matters more? Shall I? To compare or not to compare, or can I compare, ‘that is the question’.

Is it possible for me to compare people of different colours when I neither chose my skin colour nor created it? Most probably, this is the dilemma of every single person of the world. They are like me. Created by God. Like me, neither did they choose the colour of their skins nor suggested a colour for others’. Therefore, fortunately or unfortunately, we cannot compare or judge others by the colour of their skins. I mean, how can a creature compare or judge another creature? However, those, on planet earth, who could claim to have their skin colour chosen or created by them, deserve, by all means, to judge others. Nonetheless, such exceptional individuals have yet to be found.

And where did the idea of some colours superior to others come from? Did God reveal such an idea to anyone? Did God choose superior colours for some and inferior for others? Do we not imply this when we consider some colours superior to others? And, why would God create inferior colours when He is the supreme creator? Is it not blasphemy against God?  

It is an interesting fact that under the skin of any colour, human bodies are exactly the same. Can we not bypass a very thin veneer of the object called ‘skin’ and treat human beings, not judge or compare, based on the content of their character? Can we do this? Or, are we so frail that mere a skin colour incapacitates our reason to hurl this world into a living hell of racial crimes?

Death of a Life!

There was a time when human beings lived on earth and enjoyed the bliss of life. There was a time when smiles were beautiful, laughters were genuine, giggles were amusing, hugs were warm and handshakes were loving. There was a time! There was a time when humans talked to each other without any medium and shared their feelings and ideas; when they were close to each other; when they rushed to help each other, when they shared their pains, sorrows and hardships with each other; and there was a time when they would sit next to each other and feel the company. Yes, there was a time and it was not very long ago. 

Now, the smiles are ‘selfie’ smiles and courtesies are stale. Though distances have vanished between humans, but limitless vacuum has been created. Mobile phones, social media and technology has blown apart those values. Laughters are fake, hugs are stinking, handshakes are musty. We are too close, but too far. We do not talk, we chat; we do not smile, we send ‘smileys’; we do not see each other face-to-face, we do FaceTime, Skype and Whatsapp; and we do not seek friendships and make friends, we ‘follow’.  Beautiful human expressions, created in the superlative sublimity, have been tragically replaced by rancid ‘smileys’ and ‘emojis’. We text even when we are sitting next to each other. We do not share others’ pain, we ‘share’ them on social media; we do not save a dying person, we take pictures to share on the social media to make our accounts obese with ‘likes’; and the tragedy is that we write sympathetic, moralistic and exhortative quotes on such posts to pretend to be humans. Mobile phones and social media have become oxygen and our lifeforce for us.  

Consequently, we get blessings for this nauseated lifestyle. We are hollow; we are empty; we are wasted. We are machines. We are dead. We are winning scientific battles in space, but we have lost the Battle of Humanity at home. Our mobile phones are ‘smart’, but we have become stupid. It is the death of an exquisite and splendid life that we had before. A life that was slow, but full of life; raw, but juicy. There was a time!

We are living in an age where, very soon, a time will come when meeting between two human beings, in the absence of all technology, will become the ‘Breaking News’. That would not be a tragedy: that WILL be a Shakespearean Tragedy.  

Doleful Education Systems

Except for a few, education systems around the world can be held responsible for the creation of depressed, lonely and mentally upset individuals who in turn leave no stone unturned in making this world a living hell. Along with educationists, teachers are equally responsible for creating those grey clouds on the happy blue skies of our world—which otherwise would have been a cradle of happiness for humanity.

Our education systems are very ill-balanced. They only believe in creating grade-scoring machines—individuals who waste their positive and healthy energies in negative competition of surpassing their schoolmates and proving them inferior. This so-called challenging atmosphere in schools germinates among the young minds strong feelings of jealously, which is probably the undisputed monarch of all negative emotions.

Our education systems create success maniacs whose minds dominate the idea of winning even at the cost of all healthy and positive emotions. The irony is that educationists and teachers are proud of this sick mindset. Have we ever thought of the terrible consequences of success maniac mentality? Probably not. When a child, stuffed with one idea of winning at all costs and winning and nothing but winning becomes his or her creed, the only option that he or she can fight for, gets setbacks in practical life, an inevitable reality, he finds himself or herself not fully equipped to handle the situation. The result is a depressed, lonely, dejected and mentally unbalanced person, extremely vulnerable to falling into the ill-smelling abyss of life where we find all sorts of poisonous elements like terrorism, disruption, misery, melancholy and disorder. Almost not a single education system practically believes in teaching students how to lose gracefully; how to be unsuccessful and composed at the same time; how to hug failures and get sweetness from its bitter kisses; how to be happy and have healthy relationships; and how to face rejections in life gracefully. Are these education systems doing justice, as they should have done, to the lives of young people? It has been witnessed that top scoring children at school are sometimes the unhappiest adults and this is really tragic as well as thought provoking.

Another problem with education systems is that they lack farsightedness. And this is a massive problem. Our education systems do not teach young people how to become a useful citizen of this world. Building the character of young people, teaching them how to be happy in life; how to keep positive attitudes, even when the skies are overcast with the clouds of disappointment; how to control and handle money; how to have great and fruitful relationships with others; and above all, how to be emotionally intelligent—these are those neglected virtues that do not find any place in our curriculums and unfortunately, they cannot sit properly and comprehensively in the lives of individuals when they grow up. What is the result of this massacre of these exceptional skills? Simple. We see terrorists, robbers, burglars, thieves, corrupt politicians, gang-rapists, greedy bankers, depressed shooters and murderers. There is a never ending list of such people as mentioned above, but all of them were once innocent young children, not evil souls destined to damnation. Who is responsible for their destruction? A question that needs serious thoughts. Education is far more than producing grade-scoring machines and merely following the national curriculum. It would not be a bad idea to re-think, re-design and re-create the curriculums for the optimum efficiency of preparing the future generations.

School children are like soft wax, delicate buds and young saplings. The way education systems mould them in their tender years, will determine the future product. Therefore, creating the brightest future of our world by sowing the seeds of humanity in the minds of the youth is not a simple ask, but a huge responsibility. If a child learns his lessons; learns how to face failures and successes; how to be happy; how to be emotionally intelligent; how to bear the slaps of harsh realities of life and overcome them gracefully; and how to be a useful member of the society, educationists and teachers are doing their job with great responsibility.

The Forgotten Art of Breathing

“If the mind is the king of senses, the master of the mind is breath.”

Breathing is life and practising breathing exercises is a miraculous way of controlling the mind. Breathing exercises are a very powerful way of meditation in order to calm the mind and the nervous system but unfortunately, it is taken for granted.

Breathing does not have to be forceful or deep, however, it does not mean shallow breathing at all. It should be comfortably deep, avoiding any strain on the lungs, chest, facial muscles and skull. Inhalation and exhalation should be at their comfortably lowest speed level. There must not be any jerks while inhaling or exhaling. It must be a very smooth flow of breath. In this way each cell and muscle of the body get oxygenated thoroughly which is the life force. It rejuvenates the body and one feels alert and active. Vincent Cronin in his book Napoleon (1995) mentions a very interesting fact about Napoleon regarding his sheer vitality and alertness. He says that Napoleon had exceptionally large-sized lungs which gave him the advantage of inhaling a great amount of oxygen at one time and this made him super active. For this very reason, according to Cronin, Napoleon could manage with as little as 3-4 hours of sleep in a day. The reason is that his long and extended inhalation and exhalation gave him enough life force and oxygen to cleanse his bloodstream thoroughly. That was the secret behind his very active life and exceptional stamina which enabled him to plan his battles better than others. This is just one example of the benefits of taking in large quantities of oxygen for gaining extraordinary energy.

Inhalation should be gradual and controlled, and then the breath should be retained in the lungs for a comfortably long time without any strain. Similarly, during exhalation, once again, the release of breath should be gradual and controlled.  It allows human cells to absorb as much energy as they can to rejuvenate the body and to remove toxins from the bloodstream to make anyone feel lighter. How very simple is this process but in our stressful lives we have forgotten the true art of breathing.

Posture is equally important to get the maximum out of breathing exercises. By sitting upright with a straight back, like Buddha, all obstructions in the flow of breath are removed and full benefits of a wonderful journey start to flow into one’s life.

During the exercise, the mind should focus on breathing only i.e. it should see the breath coming in and going out like a flowing stream. Being motionless during breathing exercises creates the bliss of internal silence. This will focus the mind, create meditative effect and a person will feel fresh after the exercise.

If only we could spare 15 minutes, or at least 5 minutes, a day to do breathing exercises, we can achieve great mental and physical benefits. During breathing exercises, the brain is quieter; the nervous system is at peace and functions effectively. Compassion, kindness, politeness and calmness are some of the outcomes of being focused.

Meditation and its Wonders

Although meditation is a wide term, yet in simple words it is a technique to train the mind to concentrate on a specific object, sound, breath or thought. Once the mind learns how to meditate, it can block out all other thoughts except the one which is focused on at will. This stage comes slowly but once achieved, it is the most powerful state of the mind resulting in wonderful benefits in day to day life like target achieving, relaxation, internal happiness, contentment and inner peace.

Human mind resembles a convex lens when it is focused; and a concave lens when it is not. In a focused state, it can pump an enormous amount of energy into a thought creating reality out of a mere idea exactly like a convex mirror which diverts sunrays passing through it to a focal point, strong enough to burn any inflammable thing. However, the energy level of the scattered sunrays, passing through a concave lens, is next to nothing. And the same is true for scattered thoughts. It is simply beyond imagination how powerful effect focused thoughts can create. For example, if someone attempts to write an essay, a book, or find out a solution to a seemingly impossible problem, he could do the required task powerfully, effectively and quickly with a focused mind in the absence of all distractions and mental chatter. Meditation can be extremely useful for students in their studies. It is an equally powerful tool for others to achieve success and goals quickly. A focused mind takes an exceptionally short amount to time on any task undertaken.

Apart from getting things done quickly and effectively, the meditative state of the mind is also anti-stress, anti-tension, anti-anxiety, anti-depression and anti-ageing. Meditation is the best antidote for all psychological disorders of our troubled times. It is a well-known fact that various external factors of this materialistic life bring human mind under an immense amount of stress, which is, then, transmitted to our senses. In this way, our senses get out of our control and start reeking of inner destruction. Now the question is:

How to control our disturbed senses for attaining the inner tranquillity? 

The truth is, we do not have to control our senses; we have to control the king of our senses i.e. the mind.  In a meditative state the mind is peaceful, relaxed and clear without any tension. In this state of the mind human senses are also at peace and fully relaxed which amounts to the absence of stress, tension and anxiety. What else can we ask for?

Mediation is not a hard nut to crack. Anyone can spend 15-30 minutes every day on regular basis to achieve a meditative state of the mind. It is the consistency that demands permanence. When an attempt is made to control the mind, it will rebel and resist because it does not like the idea of being controlled. As soon as the focus is laid on an image, idea, sound, or breath (i.e. inhalation and exhalation), the mind will set off on its imaginative flights. These are the signs of initial success because the mind starts realising that attempts are being made to control it, therefore reacts. First two or three weeks would be difficult but after that, the mind will lay down its arms and start calming down, focusing. This is the time when the true flavours of meditation can be enjoyed. Once this level is achieved, hours in meditation will pass like minutes and shackles of time and space will literally be escaped. Life will change both externally and internally. The mind will start flying at enviable altitudes, like never known before in one’s life. A person at this point will be happy without any apparent reason, peaceful from inside. Stress, tension will be the names of some foreign unseen ghosts. The mind will be free by any definition.