If I could pick one thing to do for the rest of my life, it would be books. Everything to do with books. Wearing book items, building book things, drawing line drawings of books, navigating which books I want to read next, adding books to my lists, meandering bookstores and libraries. And all of this extraneous obsession is because there is nothing like reading a book. No greater joy.
I think about Alexander Hamilton and Barack Obama-both voracious readers. I love that the decisions they made were structured through the lens of all the books that influenced them. I want that to be me. I want my decisions to showcase that I understand others based on all I’ve read about several individual experiences, that I utilize a mindset built by hundreds of varied stories and books.
I love curating my book path. My desire is varied which also sparks joy in itself. I’m not a one-trick pony when it comes to genre. I will flip from a cozy fantasy about a witch and a tiny dragon to an autobiography to a non-fiction book about fungi to a literary masterpiece by a russian novelist to a book about stoicism. Sometimes I want something challenging, sometimes I just want it explore and enjoy the view.
All books, no matter how complicated or simplistic, show your mind doors to new worlds and ways of thinking and all I strive to do in this life is expand my own mind.
If you choose to walk through the doors, you WILL have side effects, and these side effects are always good.
The Atlantic has a similar mentality:
“For three years running, while considering which books will make up our Atlantic 10 list, we have asked ourselves the same basic questions,” our editors write. “Which stories this year brought unexpected clarity to the subjects that most confounded our understanding? Which of them opened up new, enlivening ways of thinking about things we only thought we knew?”
My reading timeline feels slower than other timelines happening in my life so it’s a way for me to slow down time. There are times where I’m reading one book in the beginning of the month and think, “Oh I’ll probably just read one or two books this month,” and then all of a sudden, I’ve read 5-8 by the end of it. It’s like time stops for me to finish or continue reading. This occurrence makes it hard to explain how all the other timelines are moving so much faster than this “reading timeline.”
I also feel like everything I gain from books helps me become a better person, whether it helps me with what TO be or what not to be. They also sustain and grow my understanding of others. Of course, books also allow me to live many lives instead of just one. It’s a real form of time-travel as well an addition of lives lived.
I also am enamored with having found a hobby I can do for the rest of my life. I fully plan to rely on books as company and entertainment, I love them THIS much.
Reading simultaneously relieves stress AND makes me feel accomplished. There are not many activities out there that make me feel similar. Most tasks I need to complete are mostly just stressful, so this seems like a double win for my dopamine levels.
Books have been a mentor to me, specifically, in my major change in alcohol intake. They have also played mentor in learning a new life belief system with the re-surfacing of stoicism. They have taken me places I would have never understood without them. They force me to get better and to grow even when that’s not the goal. And most of all, they never stress me out. If they did, DNF is an act of empowerment and agency if I do say so myself.
So, if you are ever wondering what to get me as a gift, anything book related will suffice. 😉 I hope all this writing worked! I love book gifts.
onthecontrarykelly 