BOOK REVIEW: Mwebasa’s book of quotes is a sparkling gem of wisdom

Reviews

Title: “Inspired by Forty: Lifestyle, Love, Hope and Character: Quotable quotes”

Author: Richard Mwebasa’s

Where is the book found: All Ugandan Bookshops

Length: 30 pages

 

In Richard Mwebasa’s book of quotes “Inspired by Forty: Lifestyle, Love, Hope and Character: Quotable quotes”, the author immediately gives you a taste of what he has in store for you, the reader, in the introduction. And he does so by dropping a line worth quoting: “Words are seeds. When planted in the hearts of others they growand blossom and later bare fruits.”

He is right.

Words can teach us so many things by offering wisdom and insights from those who say or write them.

In this way, certain words become friends that we can consult throughout our lives for guidance and advice.

They also help us deal with situations, emotions and even win arguments in favor of what we believe in.

Words are indeed powerful, so powerful that they can survive a typo or misprint as seen in the same introduction:

The idiom “bare fruit” is actually “bear fruit”. The verb “bear” relates to carrying or supporting whereas the verb “bare” means ‘to uncover and expose it to view.

Again, “This book is about 40 quotes that will never leave you the same. Why 40 and not any other number. The answer is that 40 is known in our “contemplary” times as the age of full maturity and destiny.”

The word “contemporary” is badly mangled, but we understand what the author is trying to convey.

His first quote rings true:

Choices are keys. These keys have the power to open or close the doors to your destiny.Learn these keys and master them well. The choices you    shall make or are made for you will   make or break you.”

This quote makes you stop, think and reflect on how every choice in your life has had a knock-on effect to the next choice and the next as dominoes fall in the direction of your destiny.

Because we have no "other" life or alternative lifeline, the choices we make cannot be reversed by any time-travel switchback. So we must make the choices that do not unmake our good fortune (to be alive).

Mwebasa keeps his quotes quotable, and creatively curated to whet a reader’s appetite for wordsmithery:

There is a know and a ledge in knowledge. If you know something it is enlightenment.You however must

jump the ledge which is a tipping point to apply that enlightenment

through action for the knowledge to gain true value.”

Apart from the clever wordplay, the message is spot-on: we must all learn to take the plunge by having the courage of our convictions.

It is the reason why a book of quotes is helpful: it sets the blueprint for our actions.

Mwebasa is saying, by implication, that without action everything you know, believe and or say will become a mere dead letter unless you give it life and meaning by putting your thoughts into deeds.

Actualized thought is indeed, pun unintended, the highest expression of self.

Identity is so important that it is ingrained in the very fabric of our existence and within ourDNA that

we all seek to be identified, so much that not being identified leaves us

hanging in the balance, without any foundation with a possibility of falling intooblivion.”

Identity is a state of mind in which we recognize our purpose and then go out to fulfill it in tandem with our peculiar character traits. It is who we are.

That’s why, it is important to find your label.

Not how you’re labeled by society, but how you label yourself by who you are and what you define yourself as being.

The opposite, Mwebasa points out, is oblivion as you become identified as nothing.

On the subject of love, the author has some very interesting insights:

Listen to your heart and learn to decipher the language it speaks that only you canfathom. Your heart will never lie to you.”

Purge hatred with Love for hatred stings the person breeding it where Love massages thesoul with peace.”

The author states, in not so many words, that love is the balm of all things good; it leads the way to self-discovery and protects us from the depredations of hate.

The author intelligently acknowledges love as a key to unlock any questions one may have about life and self. For the heart never lies, so love speaks truth to who we are and thereby elevates us to the heights where we belong.

Mwebasa distinguishes love from hate, which the author points out stings the hater.

Or, as actor Will Smith once said, hate in your heart will consume you too.

The structure holds the purposed vision in place. The picture of the purposed vision holds the structure and gives it a pulse and heartbeat of life.”

This quote sums up best the power of this book, as the book is structured to render wisdom and inspiration and, in doing so, replenishes itself as a structure of wisdom and inspiration.

This philosophical interpenetration here, with regard to the book’s power, has a karmic resonance to it.

For through structure “the purposed vision” reflects the intent and actions of any individual and will influence his or her future.

By extension, this book being structured as a treasure chest of quotes will help shape many a reader’s future towards the power of our shared potential.

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