Does reading ruin my life?

I love sending my friends voice notes. Partly because I’m obsessed with hearing myself talk, but also because it usually brings up thoughts that wouldn’t have come up in a normal conversation (mostly because nobody would have the patience to let me ramble for five minutes).

In one of those voice note conversations, I was telling my friend about how reading has changed my life. There are books that I still think about, books that have changed my thinking. Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is one of those. I read it when I was travelling in Ireland, carrying my copy on busses, and reading it in hostel rooms while strangers were falling asleep around me. Whenever I open that copy now, I am transported back to that time, the feeling of freedom and being a bit lost.

But it’s not just specific books that have changed my life. Reading in general has changed the way I look at the world. I apply the narrative structures I come across in books to my life all the time. I want there to be a true love story in my life, I want to be rewarded for hard work and sometimes I think of myself as the main character when I should be seeing myself in the context of everyone around me.

While stories are usually derived from real life, real life should not be derived from stories. Real life tells stories in its own chaotic structure, and can’t be compared to the neat beginning, middle, and end we find in books. It’s difficult to accept the lack of control we face in real life, to understand where to put all the suffering we encounter in the world. How are we supposed to incorporate all of that into our story lines?

However, I wouldn’t want to let go of those stories either. As long as I am aware of the context my story takes place in, as long as I don’t ignore the suffering for the sake of a better story, I want to keep seeing my life through the lens of books and stories. It makes life more interesting, more beautiful, more worth living.