The Mystic Ranger

A story. Yup. That’s all it is. Minus the adjectives.

Life-changing, mem­o­rable, and most influ­en­tial; unfor­get­table and really thor­oughly awe­some. Of course it would only be self-flattering to say any such thing on themselves. 

It is about a seag­ull with the name of Jonathan Liv­ingston. I could go about telling you the whole story, con­sid­er­ing its just a 100 pages long. But if I told you, it’d entirely spoil it. It is one of those time­less clas­sics, which is already 3 decades old, but will never really be out of meaning.

In essence, the most impor­tant point I received out of it, is that one should do some­thing for the joy of it, and not plainly for the end result of it. If we study (my anal­ogy), we should study because we find a thrill in the process of learn­ing. Not because we want to get marks, and get a job, and die just another use­less per­son. And it ade­quately faces the point which peo­ple often con­test such a state­ment with: one can’t live out of the fun one gets by work­ing. And like I knew, it nicely tells you that one can. There is really no need to look for money, in life, but a per­pet­ual search for some­thing we really want to do. Results shall come by them­selves — and they are bound to bet­ter than oth­ers if what we do, is with a pas­sion for it.

I won’t only say this is a book you must read, I’ll add that you should do this after buy­ing one for your­self. And it’d be silly if you get “intim­i­dated” by the fact that the Rs. 200 tag seems a bit ludi­crous for such a tiny book. It is worth way more — way way more. And another rea­son you must buy it, is so you can read it like a hun­dred times every year at least, so finally you end up liv­ing a life you want to live, rather a life you’re liv­ing just for sur­viv­ing.