It used to be that you would have to read tons of books and meditate and ponder over things intensely before a pearl of wisdom would pop up in your mind.

But with social media, you can have 25 life-affirming messages before breakfast, and that’s even before the, err, often inappropriate good morning greetings your friends send you (friends, you know who you are! Errr…please stop sending them!)

While growing up, I was eager for knowledge, a core step towards which was to learn English. However, nobody in my kampung spoke English, beyond being able to say “you bloody fool”.

Our leaders then seemed to believe education was critical for our progress. They spoke good English themselves and didn’t thrash it out of laziness over the effort to be good at it.

Sneaking out to read

I learned English through a lot of reading. I bought second-hand English books and periodicals from the roadside stalls in Macalister Road or the dingy shops in Chulia Street in George Town.

I used to sell them books too. At the end of the school year when the rich schoolmates threw their books away, I’d collect them and sell them at these shops and stalls.

Seven copies of old Reader’s Digests went for RM1. Picture magazines such as Life were cheap too, but unfortunately, they were big and didn’t fit neatly into my homemade bookcase.

My parents were uneducated but believed education can give you a better life. I used to get a lot of grief when my primary school teachers, at regular interrogations by my mother about my progress, told her that while I read a lot, I read other stuff and not school books.

My oh my. I’d get more lectures from my mother just for that than a four-year undergraduate degree course.

At our neighbouring village of Kampung Seronok (“Happy Kampung”!) was the publishing company Sinaran Brothers. I’d sneak into their warehouse to read. After they got tired of throwing me out, they let me stay and read as much as I wanted.

When tablets were of stone

In school we had slates – a stone tablet or “papan batu” – for writing, using a stylus that scored the slate. We would rub off the marks with a damp cloth or, cooler still, the moist tuber of wild orchid plants. Then we were ready to start again.

We were using tablets decades before Apple started selling their overpriced electronic versions. Ours were cheap, organic and open-source from day one. The screens were touch sensitive too. You touch my screen, I’d get very sensitive and there’ll be fisticuffs during recess.

I learnt a lot from Reader’s Digest. Through its musty, yellowing pages my mind was transported all over the world and even through the universe. I also got to know lots of great jokes which are now reproduced on TikTok without any credit or attribution.

Over time the magazine’s politics and world-view didn’t quite agree with me. But it was revolutionary in producing condensed, readable articles from many other publications. They curated great content, pioneering what many of today’s online portals do.

On the gift of beauty

I remember reading about a man who spent his life helping others through what we’d now call a charity NGO. He persuaded a beauty pageant winner to join him by telling her “The gift that God gives most and gets back least often is beauty”.

That hit a nerve and stuck with me.

Was that a universal truth similar to the second law of thermodynamics, that the universe tends in the direction of increasing disorder, or entropy? That what’s beautiful today is less so tomorrow and deteriorates over time?

Perhaps not. I think he was referring to something more mundane and earth-bound, of how we humans deal with each other and everything around us during our existence.

Ugliness of progress

Much of the loss of beauty in life has been due to so-called “progress”. Over centuries, humans exploited nature to make desired new creations, from ice cream to skyscrapers to atomic bombs.

In return, we caused environmental degradation, resource depletion, species extinction, and wars. Whatever beauty we now have is most likely only on the surface, hiding a lot of ugliness beneath.

What about people? Aren’t some more beautiful than others, going by the prevailing social norms where supermodels and movie stars are beautiful? What have we got back from those endowed with such “gifts”?

Yes, these beauties do visit the occasional orphanage to give back to society, and social media heroes flood the ether with their uplifting, inspiring homilies to help humanity.

But the reality of increasing entropy, or disorder, seems to apply to human affairs, too. Those who have been given much beauty haven’t given much back. To wildly paraphrase Spiderman, “With great beauty comes great ugliness”.

Many despair for missing out on the beauty lottery, even if the “winners” aren’t much happier either. The more they have, the more they have to lose and the less likely they’d be generous.

The kindness of strangers

I must have had what we now call low self-esteem while growing up, and I’m sure I had other issues besides. Being a poor and skinny kid from the parts “where djinns rumble” certainly didn’t help.

Since then, I’m happy to say I’ve sorted out that skinny boy problem, big time! The other issues are still works in progress, as many of them come with a lifetime warranty. But I did think a lot about these topics.

I’m condensing a hugely complex matter into a few simple conclusions, pretty much like what Reader’s Digest used to do, and certainly without their flair. But I’m not far wrong.

The world has gained much from those who shared their gifts of wisdom, knowledge, compassion or love. But it didn’t gain much from those given the gift of beauty, who at best ration it out as if it’s a perishable item – which it is, because beauty does deteriorate, just like other things in the universe, as stated in the second law of thermodynamics.

Here’s another thing I learnt from old Reader’s Digests – it’s impossible to give away kindness, because it’s always returned!

Dear readers, thank you kindly for reading this not-so-beautiful piece.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.