SAWANT: Incorporate reading into your lifestyle
Column: Sincerely Rue
The world is full of sensory experiences, perhaps overwhelmingly so today. Anything can be shoved in our faces at any possible moment through digital billboards, advertisements, TikToks and the like. We consume so much saturated color, sound and movement every day and in everything we do.
Huge screens on buildings block perfect Manhattan sunsets. Movies and TV shows are now at our fingertips, providing us with permanent company during mealtimes. This is our standard — consuming intense visual stimulation in every facet of life.
So the feeling of opening a book and letting your eyes fall upon lines of words is almost a sigh of relief. Everything becomes quieter. The words sink into you softly, and your brain is forced to piece together a world in your head with nothing but your own unique understanding of what is on the page.
Faces, places, facial expressions, movements and backgrounds are all figments of your imagination rather than shoved into your face. From sheer will alone, we might imagine stories in our head, like a movie etched onto the back of our eyelids, and like magic, our brain is trained to dream. Our brain is trained to have such an intimate knowledge of the world that we may understand it even if we only read about it. We do not have to rely on screens to show us.
If you are an avid reader, you know the value of a good book.
You can appreciate the beauty of the written word, the opportunity to take something away from every book you read until you are a mosaic of learned wisdom. You can learn things no one has told you, understand things no one has taught you and feel deep feelings despite looking from the outside in.
Today, we are wired to be on the go constantly. Go to school, go to work, go do assignments, go grocery shopping, go to this appointment or that one. But when we read, we may sit as comfortably as we please, with a cup of tea or coffee and the windows open, which is reason enough to do absolutely nothing else.
Friends who are not readers themselves ask me what appeal I find in the activity. I mean, what could possibly be so attractive about having to do all the work to understand a story by myself?
There is no physical narrator to tell it to you, no pictures or colors to show you. It is not quick enough for some people. The capture of information is not instantaneous enough, not effortless enough.
The point of storytelling is not simply to give away its significance. Stories take their audiences on a journey, build the world before them, shape the characters as the events unfold, and the story will unfurl like it has a mind of its own, revealing what it wishes only when it wants the audience to know it.
Thus, reading forces you to slow down. The whole point is to do the work on your own. Take the time to read, expand your vocabulary and let ideas you never would have thought on your own sink in. Take the time to understand the world you are reading about and its characters. Perhaps look through a different lens than the one you are accustomed to.
Naturally, reading is an exercise in self-care. It breaks apart our day and redirects our thoughts away from what is going on in our own lives — the stress, anxiety, anticipation, excitement or exhaustion we may feel.
It is an excuse to take it easy, disconnect from real life and be offline when so much of our day is spent at work, school and with friends. We end up making new friends with the characters we follow around.
Books force us to live a life that has nothing to do with our own when we pick them up. An especially good book will transport you entirely, but at the very least, you will learn something new or feel affected despite it not happening to you.
In this way, reading is an exercise in empathy. When we feel real emotions over what is happening in the book to the characters in a world that does not exist, we extend our own real understanding over an imaginary scenario. After all, given the current state of the world, there can be no shortage of compassion.
Books expand our lives in every facet possible. With everything stories extend to us, it only makes sense that we should make it a point to make reading a part of our regular lives.
Rujuta Sawant is a Rutgers Business School senior majoring in business analytics and information technology and minoring in political science. Her column, "Sincerely Rue," runs on alternate Sundays.
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