Vacation at Home

The Joy of Reading

 “Reading gives a nice, mild slow burning rapture all the time.” Joseph Campbell 

Reading has always been a favorite part of vacation for me. I love wide open hours and beaches and a great book. So why not give myself lots of unstructured time for reading at home?

Healing from the vertigo these days I read all the time. I read novels and magazines alike, enjoying several books and authors at one time. I usually have a good novel, a rocker biography, a mystery, “serious” literature and an inspirational psycho-spiritual book stacked by my nightstand at any given time. 

I have reading material within easy reaching distance from wherever I might be in our home, whether it be in the bedroom, living room or bathroom.  I have magazines in the trunk of the car and booklets tucked away in the glove compartment. I always have something to read while waiting in a doctor’s office. (There is a lot of waiting in life – why not read?)

Reading is an integral part of my life. It helps me make sense of my own world and opens up to new worlds.  It is an adventure of the mind.  It is vacation at home! 

I love to read.  It informs my consciousness. Language and story transport me and connect me to other cultures, other mindsets, other perspectives and other feelings.   

Reading helps me to understand myself and my own feelings, either through empathizing with characters in a novel or a musician interviewed in Rolling Stone. My mind and my heart are expanded and enriched through reading. Reading introduces me to places, people and activities outside of myself. 

It doesn’t always matter what I read, but it matters very much how I read.  I adore good writing, (bad writing is so irritating), and there is surprisingly good writing in all of the different genres. 

 It is most important that I read with rapt attention.  If I focus and allow myself to be absorbed I am more likely to remember what I read. I might even be changed by it. I may learn a new perspective that becomes a part of me and my understanding of the world. 

I have become so inspired and attached to characters in a novel that I have actually been changed by them. I think about what they would do in a certain situation and I am inspired to adopt their goodness or courage. (Dorothea in Middlemarch.) 

Conversely, I have gotten so angry with certain characters, that their behavior has stopped me when I am tempted to act unseemly. (Oliver in Angle of Repose.) 

This kinship can occur equally with a salty detective in a crime novel (Kinsey Milhone), or Edith Wharton (Countess Olenska).  It all depends upon my mind state while I am reading.  If I am absorbed and engaged, almost anything I read can be a learning experience. (This is another benefit of meditation; it teaches me to be still, focus and pay attention.) 

I make notes on books I read, copying down a quote from a novel or a spiritual book word for word. I may mark the pages I want to read one more time after I have finished the book.

It sinks into my consciousness when I take the time to actually write the words with a long hand. There is an added gift years later when I go back to the book and see my notes and passages that moved a younger me tucked into the front cover. 

Reading is a feast for my spirit. It is an ecstatic lift of the mind.  It is an accessible and ease-filled way of being on vacation at home.