Influence of Literature on a Person’s Life
I was initially a scientific-minded person before I ever got introduced to the beauty of Arts. I used to ponder over minute things of life in a scientific manner. It was my introduction to Literature from where I realized that I had a pretty limited viewpoint for thinking.
Literature is the major branch of Art and it includes everything from a rhythmic nursery rhyme to an epic like The Faerie Queene. It lives in the drama you watch or the cartoons you see or the movie you enjoy, all of these things have taken inspiration from the classical literature.
It is difficult to deny that the influence of literature is obvious on a person's life. But how does it influence you may ask? In many ways. It has the ability to change your outlook of a particular department of life. It may add up to your level of endurance. It may compel you to question about yourself and your conduct etc.
The first and foremost influence of literature may appear on how you think about the problems of life unlike other people around you. It makes you more humane and kind towards other people and living beings. It enables you to understand their limitations and sufferings and guides you how you can be helpful to them.
Speaking of thinking, Objective thinking is the hallmark of Literature in particular. Objective thinking in a person means to think and act without being affected by personal opinions, with rather a universal approach to it. For instance, when you see a person in distress, instead of viewing his miserable condition from a personal angle but a rough perception of how he feels is objective thinking. Objective thinking helps you to form an opinion that will be acceptable by the people of different countries and holding different beliefs, especially in an age where different people are being connected through the rope of internet.
Literature also helps you form a balanced opinion. Everything in this world has its advantages and disadvantages collectively. Similarly, a situation may hold a bright as well as a dark side of it. Throwing light only on a single aspect of it, is what we deem an incomplete representation. But it is difficult to keep people in the dark for long especially in our times where the explosion of information is just a tap away. Literature gives you an insight of the both side of a coin and leaves on you how you form a balanced opinion.
Literature increases your ability to endure hard times. It encourages you to face a problem instead of shrinking from it. Endurance and tolerance are two chaif necessities of the mayhem of our modern times and literature makes its follower ready for the battle.
Literature enhances the value of our local culture. It does not make us proud about it but rather pats our backs to embrace it. For instance, I didn't value our mother tongue Seraiki in favour of Urdu and English. But after getting in touch with literature and literary people, I embraced it with my open arms. It is crystal clear that literature improves the ratio of acceptance among us.
It is difficult to deny that literature compels us to question about various things prevailing in our society and what are the root causes behind prohibited activities. The answers are often disturbing but justifiable. Similarly, literature provokes you to question about yourself and why you exist here. It suggests you that it is you and your appropriate actions that shape your aim. Self questioning does not make you perfect, neither does it promise to. It only presents a mirror to you to face up according to your needs.
Literature is wrongly associated and even condemned for being obscene in nature. Surely, I don't deny the existence of sensuality in it, but in some texts, it is justifiable. There is always a contributing factor behind every misshap. The problem is, Literature does not want to hide anything from you. Even the dark realities of life.
It is certain that literature is far more than just singing about the beauty of stary night or mountains lit by the romantic ray of the moon. Literature is a mirror with a convex lens in which every good and bad reality of life is magnified and reflected straight into our eyes not for the sake of moral degradation but for its reformation.
