'Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book'. This is a quote from The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and is one of the many reasons I believe in reading. It doesn't teach you as much as it unlocks a desire to know more, a new outlook on the world, and sometimes a whole different world that you can make your own.
Reading gave me the desire to find out more about so many things that I read about. These were things I found either ridiculous or just brushed away until I read about them. Things like Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology and history. I saw them all as stupid, until I picked up one book on Greek mythology by Rick Riordan. The author wrote about all three and, as much as I didn't feel like they were important, I read all of his books. I learned what older peoples believed, and I read somebody’s idea of what they would be like in modern times, which of course got me wondering about that. Afterwards, I found myself trying to find out anything I could about the myths in his books and other myths, too. Reading those books had me reading other books, and I still am.
It also unlocked a new outlook on the world we live in. I read a couple of books that were from the point of view of someone with cancer, such as The Fault in Our Stars and After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick. It may seem strange, but they both helped me realize that there is death in this world, and we, as humans, need to accept that. I've always realized that, really, but they just strengthened my awareness of that. I read a lot of books to figure out more in this world, and what some other people think.
Reading has created a whole new world for me, one where people can understand what I do, the things I get from reading. Though I can't live there, I visit this world often enough to wonder if that's really an okay place to live in. Is my paradise really dangerous? But then I realize that these thoughts are also created from books I read, where Utopia apparently exists, but the whole thing is twisted and it helps to jolt me back into reality. No place is perfect, or a paradise, and dreaming of one is just dangerous, a dream that, if it were to become reality, would end up a nightmare. It's a place that's safe inside your head, but not outside of that. It's a place that would be too dangerous to exist, a perfect world that could end the world, too. But doesn’t the world have to end someday? Become overheated, or covered in water, or any of those other theories. We brush them off as crazy, but maybe they aren’t. Maybe the world really will end, from any of those causes, and we refuse to accept it. We refuse to accept it why? Because we don’t like death, or reality. We think we’re immortal, but we’re not. But you know what are? Books. Not those short little books that might be popular for a while, no. Classic books that make us think, and create a world of our own. So maybe, and just maybe, after we’re all gone, our books will live in our own worlds that we created in our minds. And maybe our minds will exist forever, hidden away, and we will live on. Or maybe we’ll just die. Maybe that’s the end, and our books and musings that we maybe wrote down or something are all that’s left of us. Who knows? All we know is that books will always last longer than we do, and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe we need something to last, and maybe it’s best that it’s knowledge. And what contains knowledge? The books we read.
Reading is powerful. It can change your mind in so many ways, and can change your entire perspective of things. Sometimes it can be dangerous, but only if you truly agree with what the author is writing about, the dangerous part. Books give knowledge, shine a whole new light on things, and give you a world of your own. As said by William Nicholson, 'We read to know we're not alone.’ And isn’t that just the reality?
