I have never written something like this before so the writing might (will) be terrible but I hope I can get my ideas across.

So last night I was talking with my friend and the topic of books eventually came up. I have never been an avid reader all my life and was just planning to read regularly from this summers. Self help books came up and she said she didn’t like them but I defended them for some reason. Even though I haven’t read a lot of them, they have always made me think about something or the other and that is why wanted to start reading books. “They help/force me to think about things I normally wouldn’t”. Then she told me that she liked fiction because it helped her escape from the real life temporarily. Well I haven’t read a lot of fiction books so I didn’t really get what she meant but “Helps me escape from reality” made me think. She asked me to read “The perks of being a wallflower” and I loved it. But I never actually got that feeling of escaping reality. Although it made me think about a lot of things about me which I should change but I never used the book as a portal for me to escape from my problems temporarily and be happy. And that’s what I thought about. Do people read books to escape reality? More importantly, Should people read books to escape reality? And that is why I wanted to write this, so that I could organize my thoughts and pour them down.

I get it. We all need times of escaping from our daily life, our reality. These times in a balanced dosage, can produce beneficial change for a person: rest from the stress of life, refreshing us. That’s why we go on vacations. That’s why people love travelling. That’s why people love songs.

Books provide exactly this. A portal to temporary freedom from real life. But if one is spending 8 hours a day, 7 days a week every year, they may have an overdose of escapism, may have become dependent upon it not to help them face their own life issues, but to avoid them. And why think of reading as an escape mechanism when it can be so much more.

Read to understand, read to imagine, read to think and read to change. Make books a portal so that when you come out, you come out enlightened.

Franz Kafka said

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?”

There is so much truth to this. But escaping reality, avoiding it and not coming to terms with it won’t do you any good. And for long can you avoid it?

We should read to divulge ourselves into a whole new world. Not to escape ours. There’s a subtle difference because the latter sounds as if one is avoiding and piling up problems rather than facing them.

All in all I think we should avoid reading for the purpose of avoiding life. Sooner or later we’ll have to face it. Why not sooner? :)