When you were little, I’ll bet you had a book that was your favorite. There probably was a favorite movie too. I can’t even imagine my childhood without them both. At age 5, my movie was, and still is, Star Wars and my book was The Magic Tree House series. I wouldn’t pay attention to much else. I remember one time at the bookstore when my dad handed me a pack of four new books. I looked at them and spent a good two minutes trying figure out which characters from the Magic Tree House were on the cover of this box. When I couldn’t figure it out I took them to my dad and asked who they were. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they weren’t The Magic Tree House at all! It had never occurred to me that there were other books out there.

I’m sure many of you had that one special book that meant everything to you as a little kid. For me it was The Magic Tree House. For someone else it might be a completely different book. But most of us had a book like that, the one that made you look at the world in a different way than your little six year old self had before.

Even though we tend to focus on books, movies can have the exact same effect on us. According to www.natlib.govt, there is “proof that the cinema has a sociological influence”. They teach us life lessons, make connections to realistic characters, and help us understand life. Yeah, watching a Disney movie when you were three may not have seemed like it was teaching you anything at the time, but in reality it was helping you develop new skills. Some movies have been around for our entire lives, like Harry Potter and Toy Story. Things like this that have been shaping us from such young ages, are the reasons behind our personalities and our choices later on.

In our lives we love to focus on the future, to make everything about what comes next and the things that will influence us as we go along. But most of the time we don’t stop and look at what things got us to this point. I mean, those Magic Tree House books gave me a love of reading that I have to this day. According to a study by the University of Nigeria, “It [reading] is one of the most important activities of life..”. And if I didn’t take the time to watch a good movie every now and then, I’d need to seriously rethink my life. It’s because of these influences that we’ve become the people we are. The artists, singers, athletes, geniuses, and all the rest of us were influenced by what we watched and what we read as little kids, and if it weren’t for those amazing literary works that inspired them as kids, they may never have worked to develop their talents and get where they are now. So, as you look at the future ahead of you these next few months, make sure to take some time to appreciate your past, and all of the things that got you where you are today.