When I was in fifth grade, I wanted to read Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere.

I do not know what came over me. I just felt I want to read the novel.

So I went to our school library and asked the librarian if I could borrow the book overnight.

The librarian told me, “You’re not allowed to borrow Noli Me Tangere. The book is for high school reading.”

I left the library dejected yet I made a vow to myself: Once I reach third-year high school, I am going to devour that effing novel and ace it.

You don’t know how I felt on my first day as a junior high school student. By that time, I have read the first five chapters of the book. It didn’t matter if we took the novel as a subject in the third quarter of the school year.

I finished the novel even before my class.

Reading should be everyone’s first love. It allows you to be informed, explore things you have never seen, and imagine things that could spell possibilities for you, your family, your loved ones, heck, even a nation.