Reading is the Other Meditation

Reading fiction is meditative. It's true that it transports you into another world, but that's not the important part. The important part is that it makes you forget your current one. In a typical meditation session, you observe your thoughts. You see them pass by. You practice detachment from them. The idea isn't to not feel them but to not be controlled by them. The one thing people take away from meditation is calmness. The calmness with which they handle everything. Because they carry a certain emptiness in their mind. They are not constantly bombarded by thoughts. They have practiced living without those thoughts. So the world bothers them a little less because, without negative thoughts weighing on them, they have better control over their lives. A good story does the same to you. It not only takes you into a new world, it also frees you from the existing one. And this is important. Because the moment you are transported, all your worries, all your negative thoughts, those…