I had a realization this week.
Before I tell you what it is, though, I have to articulate why this is significant. At least for me.
If I’ve had any extended conversation with you, you probably know that I’m not much of a partier. I prefer a small group of friends at a coffee house or diner to the bar/club atmosphere. I seldom drink (though when I do, it takes maybe two or three to turn me into a puking mess), and I’ve never been high (unless you count that time that, in a post-breakup haze, I was fed sleeping pills by my Gran and hallucinated a room full of Technicolor cobwebs emanating from the ceiling fan).
In scientific terms, I am Totally lame.
Pretty much, I feel that mood-altering substances are undesirable because they disrupt my cognizant perception of my surroundings, and interfere with my ability to act rationally. And if there’s one thing I value, it’s my rationality. If I decide to deviate from this and get drunk, it’s strictly social and in an atmosphere in which I feel secure. And where the people will forgive me in the morning.
But what I’ve always disliked about drugs and alcohol is how people use them as a means to escape. Had a really bad day? Get smashed. Girlfriend cheated on you? Do some coke. You just need to forget for a little while!
Except that…no. It doesn’t help the situation, it just puts off a solution. If anything, it’ll make things worse.
Since discovering that drinking can, in fact, be fun, I’ve relaxed on this position a bit. I still cringe, though, every time I hear one of my friends talk about getting drunk to ease the effects of a shitty situation.
But I might be just as bad.
I’ve been slacking on my reading lately. Other things have taken precedence, like Bioshock 2, the bread-baking kick I’ve been on, and generally having a social life. Yet this week, amidst new-roommate worries and hair-pulling situations at work, I put all of that aside and picked up The Shining for a good, nostalgic re-read.
And it hit me.
Like a ton of bricks
I’m an escapist reader.
When the chips are down, I retreat to my nice, safe world of fiction. It’s not just this week. During the holidays, when I was losing my mind with stress, I devoured four books over two weeks. And when I look back, it’s something I’ve always done, starting with my discovery of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series at the time of my parents’ divorce.
A library is to me what a crack den is to Amy Winehouse.
Why am I okay with this?
It’s always nagged at me that I read so much, when I could be out in the world experiencing more. Shouldn’t I be sad that words on a page are more exciting than my actual life?
Rationalize, Mal, rationalize.
I value whatever bit of intelligence I am capable of exhibiting. Hence my avoidance of activities that kill off brain cells – alcohol, drugs, and reality TV. According to multiple sources, though, reading makes you smarter.
I know, duh, right?
But this isn’t confined to reading non-fiction, which will undoubtedly give you more information about the world. Reading anything will make you sharper, expand your vocabulary, and hone your analytical skills (well, maybe not anything; we’ll have to cross off Twilight, as well as 90% of the Internet. But anything else is fair game). I can vouch that my thinking is clearer if I start my day off by reading a few pages, rather than hitting the snooze button five times.
So, if I want to maximize my understanding and perception of this world which I hope to explore, it’s not only my pleasure, but my duty to read as much as I can, right? I mean, it’s one thing to see the Louvre, but another experience completely to be able to place its artifacts in proper historical and anecdotal context.
I’m not a literature-addicted shut-in. I’m the intrepid traveler, belongings on my back and book in hand.
At least, that’s what I would like to think.
Reading also tends to relieve stress and mellow a person out.
Well, there you go. That explains why my manner is so easygoing, and why new acquaintances always ask me if I’m a stoner.
But most importantly, I think, reading can show you things, desires and goals, that you never would have recognized in yourself otherwise. In my literary adventures, I’ve collected a lengthy laundry list of places I want to see, and things I want to do (I vow, at some point in my life, to work with a traveling carnival in the Midwest). Reading can spark feelings and ideas within you, from dark, uncharted corners of your psyche, that might never have seen daylight.
Don’t you see? It’s your psychological duty to rescue these marooned inclinations from their desert island fates. Pick up a volume of Burroughs, Rand, or Tolkien and enrich your existence! Become intoxicated on the rich prose of Proust. Hook up a literary IV, and nourish yourself with some Nabokov.
Whew! Calm down, kid, before you hurt yourself.
Anyway, that’s the justification I’m putting forth for my disgusting acts of escapism. I’m improving myself. Yeah. Suck on that.
What’s that? You’re partying tonight? I’ll just be here with my (::sunglasses::) book.
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