I’m feeling quite emotional today. I’m thousands of kilometres from my darling wife who is juggling work, the house, the kids and a severe illness in her family.

And today as I sat on the exercise bike in the hotel gym (you the know, the ones with a TV built in so you can torture your mind while you torture your body), I saw the ‘breaking news’ headline that former Australian Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, had died.

For those of you unlucky enough not to be Australian (sorry, the only time you’ll catch me being patriotic), Gough is probably the most iconic Australian politician in our country’s relative short history.  The title of this post references his most famous speech after being controversially dismissed from office.

While his government will be remembered for many mistakes, especially economic, in three short reformist years in the early ’70s as Prime Minister he: eliminated military conscription; got Australia out of the Vietnam War; abolished the death penalty; implemented universal health care and free university education; began the process of recognising Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional owners of the land; enacted the Racial Discrimination Act; made legislative changes to ensure equal pay for women; and refocused Australia as part of the world and part of Asia, not an outpost of a long-dead colonial European empire.

I have a lump in my throat just writing about it.

It is because of him and a few rare politicians like him in my lifetime that I became politically aware, studied politics at school and involved myself in student politics while at university.

This then got me thinking about how books can so easily tap in to the deepest recesses of our emotions and not only trigger powerful emotional responses, but also inspire us to act; to make a change in our lives or those around us.

Tuesday’s with Morrie by Mitch Albom was an example for me as I read it when my son was very young and it laid out what is important in life in a way that inspired me to want to teach to my children. Other books ring like poetry sending our emotions soaring; perhaps bizarrely, one book that did this for me was a graphic novel called Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware … truly extraordinary.

Other books tap in to darker emotions that make us: frustrated, angry or confused (The Magus, John Fowles), titillated (Money, Martin Amis; The Dice Man, Luke Rhinehart); deeply, deeply depressed (The Tartar Steppe, Dino Buzzati) or just shocked (Legend of a Suicide, David Vann).

The one author who has tapped in to my deep primal beliefs more than any other is GK Chesterton, through his essays, philosophical writing (Orthodoxy), criticism (What’s Wrong With the World).

It is obviously different for everyone, but what is it about these books that trigger such strong emotions?

On one level you could argue it is an author’s cynicism. There are some clever tricks they can use to trigger emotional responses, and they cynically deliberately employ these to masterful effect. Perhaps I am being too cynical.

It could be that we intuitively choose books because we know they will trigger a response, a response we’re craving. On the other-hand some writers, like song writers, painters, choreographers and dancers have a talent for writing stories that engage us so deeply we lay ourselves open to experiencing emotions we usually tuck away from the world as part of our normal daily lives.

So here’s to the memory of an optimistic leader and the memories of books that let us experience life more fully.