Thursday Thoughts...

"Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else, disrupting the delusion that we’re permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we’re saved!) other people are real again, and we’re fond of them." 

George Saunders

I love the idea of reading as a guided meditation. Not always of course, but when you are finding succour and support from reading then definitely yes.  Perhaps when you are reading to learn, absorb and understand it too can become a form of meditation? If you find yourself in the zone, making connections, recognising patterns, receiving clarity and wisdom? 

Helping us believe we are someone else? I guess that too is reading when you get absorbed by the book and feel like a participant or an observer in a place where you physically are not. The delusion that we are permanent and the centre of the universe is always worth disrupting yes? 

I was a tad perplexed by the last part. Does the ah ha moment occur when we come up for air after reading and re-connect with the physical world and people around us and enjoy them more because we have been away enjoying ourselves? 

Perhaps, but irrespective, the value in reading as a comfort, and a quiet and rejuvenating time, can never be emphasised too much.

 

Hong Kong.