I recently came across this somewhere, ‘Sometimes reading is all the
therapy one needs’ and couldn’t help but smile to myself. It's true that a
reader (especially like me) finds comfort in a world beyond words. Losing
myself to a 800 page tome is my ideal of shutting the quad processors housed in
my pea sized cranium. And my current addiction too.
The flipside is that I now
need a house for my beloved books. Warehouse would be most apt though... Any
takers?
The magic of reading is in the idea that you're welcomed into the mind of another in a way where you'd perhaps never be able to breakthrough into the minds of people you love and live with day in and day out! And when you think about it that way, you realize just how powerful words can be.
It was J. D. Salinger who said this and nothing could be truer: “What
really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish
the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him
up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”
"Writing
is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public" said Paulo Coelho. To put
pen to paper is to admit for the reality of that millisecond even if just to
the writer them-self that the notion/idea being toyed with does have an
identity, perhaps. Come to think of it, if it weren't for an author or poet, so
few a character would've ever been fleshed out. Think George from Famous Five,
Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse, Kabuliwala and so
many others!
Even if you're no author of a bestseller, the vent writing can and
actually does provide as a gateway for uncensored, unmeasured brainwaves is inexplicable.
Sometimes it's all the validation one needs.
It's for reasons such as these that I think that writing is cathartic. And it’s for reasons such as these that I write.
Which is also why reading what
you've written is beyond seeking validation.
It's a time capsule - a version of
you from the past as the voice to guide your present self into the future.
A
guide to when your good old present self keeps running in 8s like a dog after
its own tail – a self-written manual at moments when the rest of the world
won't understand or worse even have the time to listen.
I've found all the counsel I've needed to navigate my at times fogged vision through pieces I've written.
Case in point, when I can't seem to come up with a theme to
write my next blogpost I read what I've written and then, magic :)