Reading, a constant well-being therapy
You should try it because it has zero side-effects and it’s not bitter at all.
I first read a Jane Austen novel in 1999. I was still in school and romance was a relatively new topic. Pride and Prejudice was my first classic romance. It was prudish, complicated, sweet and Mr Darcy became the first literary hero to charm me and my heart. Which is probably why, like an annual pilgrimage I read the book at least once every year. Some years I read it every 3/4 months.
You must be wondering why. I have often wondered too why I crave the book like I crave dark chilli chocolate sometimes. Could it be that I have become addicted? I mean its just a simple book with no philosophy, no great quotes and a plotline that has been copied like mad by movies etc. All the characters have flaws, make mistakes act crazy at times and are not really the type of people I’d like to be friends with. But I still read it ever year. Maybe I want to believe that somethings in life will never change, like the plot of this book, or how my heart aches every time I read the letter Mr Darcy wrote to Elizabeth.
Which brings me to the real topic. Books are the most under-rated lifestyle therapies of our times. I mean just imagine, how beautiful it would be to gift a Robert Fulghum book to a friend instead of consoling her over a breakup.
I recently did this with my mother. I would hand her a story book meant for children whenever she would start the rant against her SILs. The transformation was magical. She was lost for hours at times in those simple tales.
I personally go through some 7–8 reading phases every year, depending on the range of emotions or other factors — Delhi winters, spat with my parents, the temperature-inside-my-home, office stress or the mood. The big guns, in my case, are Calvin & Hobbes comic books. The small guns, or books-for-all-seasons are stories by Dahl, Agatha Christie and Ruskin Bond.
Chocolate helps you when you are depressed but reading has a lasting impact and can help you get out of depression, grief and even reroute anger. You just need to try it once or twice or thrice to see the difference. Maybe this is as good a time as any to actually start that “online book therapy clinic” to help people around me achieve better mental health and calmer minds.
