Stop and Think

By Erwin Parengkuan

Meeting many participants in the class with their own dynamics and challenges was really fun.They experience many obstacles when they have to appear to speak or do public speaking.Various kinds of complaints such as blankness, nervousness, lack of confidence, difficulty finding the right words and the hope of being able to influence the audience/interlocutor.

All participants in the class have the same expectations to be able to speak optimally, unfortunately when I asked one by one whether any of them regularly read books?the answer is no!So how can you bewitch your audience if your vocabulary is limited?This is like a term put forward by Albert Einstein;“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”Indonesian society with a population exceeding 280 million people in 2025, with a ratio of 1:1000 between people who diligently read books and those who do not.Imagine how low our literacy is compared to other countries.How sad!It is not surprising that our society, especially with social media which only provides short news as daily intake, seems to understand the information, but when asked in more depth does not understand the root of the problem.

In fact, words are our main fuel in communicating, when someone does not have a rich and varied vocabulary they will continue to use them in the series of sentences they create, of course they will not be able to influence a wider audience with their intellect.But there are still many participants in the class who are hopeful, without wanting to take the time to read the book.Books scattered throughout the world are divided into 2 book categories, fiction and non-fiction.Fiction books that have a greater interest when consumed will make someone get words that contain more emotion.Meanwhile, non-fiction books will help us sharpen our brains regarding the many new knowledge that we don't know yet.

If you have a big intention, for example if you spend just 10 minutes every day you will finish one book in one month, in one year there are 12 books, etc., that we read from the great writers in this world.Non-fiction books have been proven to be effective in broadening our horizons of thinking and also producing a rich and varied vocabulary.What I feel when I regularly read books is that it makes my muscle memory bigger.Memory is longer, apart from reading books it also increases empathy because we are willing to read books from authors where we will also explore their thought patterns.

When we have new insights, new knowledge, our critical thinking skills will increase, and this will directly make us more confident, especially since we know that the lack of interest in reading in this country will make us above the average of most people we meet.If there is a person who speaks haltingly, repeats the same sentence in different contexts, thus causing misperceptions, mispronunciations and other mistakes, it is certain that this person does not/rarely reads books.

So when do you want to start reading books regularly?That's the sentence that I always convey every time I teach to the different participants in the class.