Reading Also Offers Meaning To My Existence
I am many things, I am someone who learns to live with humility, enriching myself every day. I am also the one who walks a complex path called existence trying to learn from my mistakes, my triumphs …
I surround myself with my own, I appreciate the here and now, I give myself licenses, whims and I strongly embrace my reality, at the same time that I delight in my reading nights to live other lives, to put on other shoes. Because books are also part of my existence.
Whoever loves reading loves the smell of books, and who loves to read always sadly closes the last page of that copy that has just finished. Now, that pain is not permanent, because for every finished novel there are a thousand worlds waiting for us in those pages dyed by seas of letters.
You are your experiences and all your readings
Did you doubt it? As an avid reader that you undoubtedly are, you should know that your identity, your personality and your reason for being, has not been forged only by all your experiences. Your reading hours have also sculpted you into the authentic person you are now.
If there is something that we are also clear about, it is the way in which we got to the books. Maybe you became fond of it because you saw it at home, because your parents were your reference. It is also very possible that you will be forever poisoned by a particular title, and that in some way, it opened the doors to that indisputable pleasure that is reading.
In fact, it is common that we remember with special affection those first novels of childhood or adolescence. Unforgettable discoveries that shape who we are. We know that we like to read, that our house has become too small in front of all those towers of novels where time and dust do not diminish any brightness, but… Have you stopped to think about everything that books do for you?
- Reading is a form of daily freedom that offers us refuge from stress or worries.
- Reading is a very effective way to build up cognitive reserve. Tomorrow we will have a brain full of multiple connections as strong as the best of muscles, capable of reducing the impact of possible dementias.
- The pleasure of reading is the best inheritance we can offer our children.
- Books rob us of tears, smiles and even instill in us the pleasure of terror… However, we appreciate all these intense emotions because it is also a way of life. Part of our existence.
- Many think that whoever spends the day reading flees from reality. It is not true. Whoever does not read runs away from their own knowledge and is a slave to their own limitations.
Reading is an excellent day-to-day therapy
We all feel empty, we all go through difficult times and experience those existential doubts that those around us cannot always resolve. Books are an accessible source for many of these issues that can serve as authentic therapeutic tools.
Reading is a way of questioning ourselves. Sometimes, putting ourselves in the shoes of other characters helps us to consider situations, comments and attitudes.
- Life offers us experience and learning, but books are trunks of everyday knowledge from which to compare information, data and above all, emotions.
- Every emotion experienced on the page of a book is an imprint in our brain capable of lasting forever. They teach us, they shake us and sometimes force us to see reality with different eyes.
- Reading is also an invitation to life. And there is one of its therapeutic wonders. It can take us out of our daily sadness to make us curious about things that until then, we had not considered.
Books help children to mature and adults to be children again. They are a simple key that we can keep in our bag when we take the bus, they are our bedside friends, and the ideal companions on stormy nights.
Reading opens your eyes, ignites your mind and makes your heart vibrate, it is the noblest legacy that humanity has left to its own and that in turn, we must transmit to ours. It is an exciting adventure that never ends.
Images courtesy of Jonathan Bean, Vittorio Giardino
