It is that time of the year we were all waiting for to get a rest from school and enjoy some free time –sometimes too much. I find that books are our best filler for occupying these long summer days; they can transport us away from tedium and give company when people cannot. Reading may be a time killer for the elderly or an assignment for a child in school, but it can also be a pleasure and good medicine for many.
Ceridwen Dovey was prescribed a book instead of a pill to overcome a personal struggle. In an excellent piece in the New Yorker last year, Dovey wrote about the power of books for healing and promoting mental well-being, and she explores bibliotherapy and its outlook that fiction is “the ultimate cure because it gives readers a transformational experience.” Her article is based both on personal experience and research about the effects that readings have on the brain, and she points out the benefits of literary art for mental health and social relationships.
I’ve extracted two fragments of “Can reading make you happier?” that I find interesting, and that will reveal Dovey’s ideas to you:
“ ’Fiction is a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world…based in experience, and involving being able to think of possible futures.’ ”
“So even if you don’t agree that reading fiction makes us treat others better, it is a way of treating ourselves better. Reading has been shown to put our brains into a pleasurable trance-like state, similar to meditation, and it brings the same health benefits of deep relaxation and inner calm. Regular readers sleep better, have lower stress levels, higher self-esteem, and lower rates of depression than non-readers. ‘Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines,’ the author Jeanette Winterson has written. ‘What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination.’ “
Dovey concludes that books can indeed make us happier. Whenever I read a good fiction narrative I see the world from another person’s mind, which improves my capacity of empathy, and I step outside of myself, which “allows a refreshing escape from ordinary, everyday pressures.” Thus, if you feel like you are running out of things to do on your extra free time, consider books as a good prescription to fill that space.
Written by Miriam Wagner Valladolid
Sources:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier