READ NOW OR REMAIN THE SAME
Reading dares you to grow, but we all know reading isn’t exactly fun as you have to push yourself to interact with meaningless lines and squiggles until they transform into stories, characters, and ideas. Reading is an exercise in perseverance, in which you constantly challenge yourself to achieve more than you did with your last book and break new bounds.
The fun in it is that you get to experience multiple realities. Everyone has their uniquely valuable role in life, but as insatiable humans even if satisfied with that role, we often long for other realities different from the ones we experience. For moments that we immerse ourselves in books, they release us from the constraints of our reality, they take us beyond our world and into someone else’s real or an imaginary one. They satisfy the curiosity of the elusive “What if?”.
I fondly say that perspective is biased and reading challenges our perspective.
Books help us experience life through the eyes of another and encounter diverse angles on life’s most common situations. Great authors naturally inspire empathy for their characters, and empathizing with viewpoints different from ours can feel uncomfortable, while reading doesn’t mean that we agree with the different perspectives, it does offer the opportunity to understand them.
Reading isn’t only limited to discovering the new, it also drives reflection. The books read to us by our parents often live rent-free in our memories and most will trace their love for books back to their childhood. Re-reading those books from our childhood, or reading about familiar places, times and people helps us recall the details of our own lives. It helps us remember who we are, where we are and how we came here.
Reading can be a form of escape.
Chronic escapism is not a healthy habit, but neither is dwelling on stressful life and depressing circumstances. Oftentimes, allowing the mind to focus on things other than your challenges can be highly therapeutic and beneficial. Reading, like exercise, offers a safe, healthy, and productive replacement for negative thinking. It gives the mind a safe place to rest until you regain the strength you need to overcome your obstacles.
You are never alone.
In life, we experience numerous transitions. Changing environments and realities may require you to replace old relationships with new ones, and sometimes successful adjustments are harder or take longer than expected. Whether through the comfort of a book or an emotional connection to relatable characters, books are a stable source of companionship during times of solitude when the only person you can count on is yourself.
Light up your life.
Reading can be a rejuvenating activity that renews your energy and elevates your mood. Reading gives a sense of purpose, helps us persevere through difficulty, and unlocks parts of ourselves we didn’t even know existed. For various reasons, reading makes us feel optimistic and tenaciously alive.
