Which is worse missing a meal or missing a book?
In my humble opinion it is the latter and I will explain to you why.
From the dawn of civilisation knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation.
Whether it was written on an ancient piece of parchment, or etched into the wall of a cave with some sharp implement, or whether it was written in hieroglyphics on a pyramid wall, or whether it was emailed to you as a downloadable PDF document to your computer.
Knowledge is a funny thing, it is very seldom valued when it is kept to oneself.
Obviously there are exceptions to every rule and some people have gotten extremely wealthy through keeping knowledge to themselves.
However more fortunes have been made through the sharing of knowledge than from the hoarding of it.
This should give you some food for thought.
No matter what your predicament, no matter what situation you find yourself in, and no matter how dire you think the situation is, I can guarantee that you are not the 1st person to find yourself in that situation, you certainly wont be the last, and there is someone somewhere who wrote a book about it.
Anything that you want to achieve in this world has already been achieved by someone else to some degree, and they have told their story, how they achieved it, what hazards and obstacles they encountered along the way and what they would do differently if they had to do it all over again.
They have done all the hard work for you then handed you the blueprint, the virtual keys to the kingdom.
They have taken all the trial and error out of the situation for you, you have a set of instructions from someone who travelled the same path that you want to travel, the only difference is that they did it before you and have left you a trail of breadcrumbs to follow.
I almost cried when my local Borders book store went into receivership, and I can tell you when the sale started I was one of the very first people in the queue.
I cannot count the amount of books that I have read that have left a lasting impact on me, there are way too many to count, they range from the Bible to “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.
I can sincerely say that I have never had a meal leave a lasting impact on me (well not one that I would be willing to share with you just in case you are eating as you read this article:) for years to come.
So miss a meal if you have to but never miss a book.