Imagine…
You are having a staring competition with your childhood best friend. You look him dead in the eye, trying not to blink as a small smile creeps on your face.
“I’m gonna win you know.” you say but your eyes have already turned watery.
Your eyes couldn’t handle it anymore and you blink, turning your head away and blushing.
“Fine, I’ll let you win this time.”
You giggle and get up, dragging his dead body to the basement.
Above is an example of you living a life of a runaway serial killer who just finished murdering his or her cop friend; the boy who turned her in for 7 years of prison torture.
As a reader I have lived in a palace, tamed dragons, been part of a heist, been in a forbidden romantic relationship, led a war, raised to assassinate the queen and many more.
The pleasure of reading and the beauty in its stillness; how the author’s words dance around you, blurring your consciousness into the melody they sing to you, is unmatched.
As a person, I have always used reading as an escape. It has been my comfort and my stimulant of choice. I read because I crave. I crave for many lives, mmany worlds, many systems while we have been instituted in only one. One of my favorite quote by Nora Ephron is:
“Reading is an escape and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real”
There are a variety of concepts, uncountable tales and unimaginable plot twists.
Pick one and breath them in. Enjoy while they last for this cruel world has a lot of twisted ways to bring you back.
But a heart desperate to wander, starved of adventures and tales to tell would always find its way back.
BY MARWA MUJEEB