"Write what you know is reasonable advice. Read what you don't know is better advice. Reading is an adventure; adventures are about the unknown...Literature is mix of unfamiliarity and recognition...As we travel deeper to into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood...It's the story or the poem that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves...Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact."
-Jeanette Winterson | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
When I was younger, I wrote to hold on to embers of sanity. Many, many times writing was the only coping tool I had through bouts of loss, depression, and uncertainties. It would, without fail, strengthen me. If I could express it, I would survive it, so I wrote myself stable.
In the last two years reading has become my primary source of solace.
When I read, I feel connected---more alive, more human. Reading tethers us to hope. It expands our capacity for compassion and empathy. It challenges our assumptions and enhances individual and collective knowledge. And it redirects one's focus from self to others and somehow that helps to see one's self and experiences more fully and clearly.
Reading, for me, is an offensive, sometimes preemptive, stance against isolation, catastrophizing, depression, resentment, disquiet, hopelessness, regret, and a range of unnecessary insults.* In short, reading is an act of war against the forces in life that accommodate mental, emotional, and intellectual destitution.
I read the Harry Potter series for the first time this year, and I just finished my third reread on Sunday. I am struggling to wait for my lovely friends to complete the Good Days section of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, so I can greedily inhale the rest of that wonderful read. I am starting Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit with great anticipation.
There is so much I don't know. I'll be reading for a lifetime. Thank goodness for that. 😁
