“I have lived a thousand lives and I have loved a thousand loves. I’ve walked on distant worlds and seen the end of time. Because I read.”
-George R.R. Martin
Adolescence is a crucial period of life. Different people get through it in their own unique ways. What is common is that some sort of art is required to help them pass this stage. In my opinion, the kind of art that one is tilted towards decides if the person would come out as a mature individual or a nasty abuser. While some use the medium of music, painting or culinary skills, I developed the habit of reading and writing. It made me explore different worlds and I wondered why the 18th century habit was fading into blue.
Everyone has a story of how they started reading; mine is pretty simple. My parents are voracious readers. I always found them with a book or a literary magazine in their free time. What a child sees is what a child does. So that’s what I did. I read books and my parents encouraged me to develop this habit. They bought me books and I felt like I was out of this world while reading.
The habit found its way into my teenage years. I started reading young adult fiction and found that fiction, indeed, is a doorway to reality. I learned from it what even the best and worst experiences in life couldn’t teach. My peers found it difficult to be alone while I cherished it. It made me feel self-equipped.
Everything in my bookworm life was going perfectly fine until one day, when one of my classmates decided to wreck my life. She told me that those who read would go through depression. How moronic, right! That’s what I also thought, while pushing it out of my other ear after laughing at it for a bit. But imagine being called ‘depressed’ every time you walk by, and being bullied for one of the most gracious hobbies.
Awful, isn’t it? That’s what happened to me. And it got more than awful. That’s when I actually started questioning myself about why I read. And I’ve found the best answer to it… My mom once told me that you can’t experience everything in life, so you should learn from experiences of others. Perhaps, that’s why I read.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you some lines about my reading experience:
I opened a book
And fell in love with it
It filled my heart with joy
Taking me to fascinating places
Introducing me to wizardry
Teaching me wisdom
Not just this
It made me realise
That love is the most powerful form of magic
That nothing is purely good or evil
That there’s still hope for a better world
It introduced me
To people I never thought would be so endearing
To stories that felt entirely like mine
To a world that was completely my own
I opened a book
And it became the best thing that has ever happened to me
And I found everything in it
And that has made all the difference
P.S.: I am in love with that Robert Frost line.