How to Travel Through Time
The pressures of modern life can be overwhelming, leading some of us to wish that we either lived in a past time period or perhaps in the future, after the human race has worked through the issues we face now. As time machines are not readily available, we must find other means. Entertainment of any sort can make us forget where we are and spark our imagination, but today, we are going to explore the written word. "Books don't just go with you, they take you where you've never been." - unknown. Reading books is your time machine. The stories within can take you back or move you forward through time. "The first use of good literature is that it prevents a man from being merely modern. To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness." - G.K. Chesterton. They can take you to exotic locations that you may never get a chance to visit. "Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are." - Mason Cooley. Most importantly, it can take you out of your own head, where the brain likes to circulate its same old thoughts.
Reading does not just entertain; it transforms who we are. "I am part of everything that I have read." - Theodore Roosevelt. Read about the Middle Ages, or New York City in the roaring 20's, and you are now a part of these eras. Read The Count of Monte Cristo or The Little House on the Prairie, and you were there, living alongside them. "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies; a man who never reads lives only one." - unknown. Reading is an intimate process, a process where you get to insert yourself (with all your opinions and experience) into the story. You get to use your imagination to decide what a character looks like, whether you like them, and understand them, and they get to teach you something about what it is like to not be you.
I am the mother of five children who are all officially adults now. Of the five, I have only produced one avid reader, a couple of others dabble, and the other two- let's just say they aren't in danger of getting any paper cuts. This fact troubles me, not just because I feel that they are missing out on a beautiful experience, but because I am concerned that an algorithm has carefully curated the information that they are consuming. In their small online space, they do not have to listen to people or ideas they dislike. "The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want." - F. Scott Fitzgerald. They can be told how to feel about people who are different by people with whom they already agree. They do not have to think their opinions through or try to understand oppositional points of view. They do not have to believe that anyone who doesn't agree with them is even human or deserves a place in the world. They run the risk of indoctrinating themselves. "People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself." - Doris Lessing.
Of course, avid readers can also fall into this pattern if they do not branch out from time to time and read about topics they normally avoid. "If we are inspired only by literature that reflects our own interests, all reading becomes a form of narcissism." - Terry Eagleton. Good literature provides insight into the human experience across many time periods and locations. It helps us understand how we are similar and how we developed our societies. My sister's library had a yearly book challenge that required them to expand their reading horizons. They had to read books from different categories, like a mystery, a biography, a book on mental health, a book about friendship, a book set in India, etc., to earn prizes. She said that this forced her to read many books that she would have never chosen on her own and that she was grateful for the experience. I know that everyone has limited time to devote to reading, and so it seems wasteful to pick up a book that we may not like, but give it a chance, and you may get some use out of it.
It is a good idea to read both fiction and non-fiction to attempt to achieve balance in our expectations of others. "The problem with reading is that one grows accustomed to beautiful, interesting, amazing people, and returning to the real world after hours of adventures and wonders can cause one's standards to become near impossibly high..." - unknown. I will admit to having this happen to me. I sometimes wonder if William Faulkner was correct when he said that romantic love can only be found within stories and not real life. "Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else." -William Faulkner. Maybe I need to counter that beautiful fantasy love story with a self-help book on relationships,😄.
The most important lesson of travelling through time and locations is the realization that, as a species, we have not evolved all that much. Our human problems are similar in all four corners of the earth and over thousands of years. "That is part of the beauty of literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." - F. Scott Fitzgerald. While you may not feel that you belong to the society that you are currently in, if you read enough, you will find your people. "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive." - James Baldwin.
"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you the knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is moral illumination." - Elizabeth Hardwick. Our world contains billions of stories, stories we can use to escape from our present reality into worlds that are more peaceful or more chaotic than our own. We can learn from lives lived about abuse, embarrassment, love, and sacrifice, all the things that make us humans the glorious and pathetic creatures that we are. The more reading that you can cram in, the more adventures you will have gone on and the smarter and more empathetic you will be. "Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity." - Aaron Swartz. Your time machine awaits- where do you want to go?
Love and Hope,
Big Sky Baby