Reading is Like Going to Disneyland

Love your books?  Love reading? You're not the only one. In a June article recently discovered by yours truly, Annie Murphy Paul described how she felt about it.  (Read it here.)

Paul talks about the benefits of immersive reading and how it differs from the kind of reading we do on the Web or in magazines. There, hyperlinks, ads, and videos interrupt us. That reading is filled with distractions. 

There are benefits to immersive experiences as anyone who has been refreshed by a day with The Mouse can attest. Deep, immersive reading is closest to a light trance or that state of being that is half way between wakefulness and sleep. While we are reading, we are transported and the state of the economy and world tensions do not exist. Instead, we are on a pirate ship deep in space or standing on high steel building the Brooklyn Bridge. For a time, we live in an altered state.

You probably think of fiction when you consider this phenomenon but non-fiction can do the same thing if it is written with the right tone. If you've been enveloped by a page-turner of any genre, you have experienced this unique mental condition. I'm sure it is one of the reasons we readers cherish our books.

Writing is the most important form of communication we have. It can change our minds...in more ways than one.

Talking to Ourselves

Not long ago, I read a column on www.miceage.com in which Kevin Yee speculated that if Walt Disney had been playing with an iPhone instead of watching his daughter on a small merry-go-round, Disneyland might not have been created. Busy texting or playing a game, Disney’s mind would not have been free to imagine a place where he could go on rides with his child.

Every post in this blog has been about outward communication. Yee’s column asked me to consider the conversations we have with ourselves and the movies that play in our mind. We label it imagination or, when we are feeling uncharitable, we call it daydreaming, inattentiveness, or even ADD. We worry if we talk to ourselves, even if it is silently. Are we going crazy?

How tragic that we feel we have to be busy all the time. Why are we afraid to let our minds wander? What’s wrong with sitting on a park bench and imagining that things can be different? What would our world would be like if DaVinci had not stared at cracks in the wall, if Einstein hadn’t stared out the window or Disney had not sat on a park bench? What if they all had been busy playing Tetris on an iPhone instead of turning their minds loose?

We claim to support “thinking outside the box.” That can only happen if we give ourselves a chance to do it. We must communicate internally, turn thoughts over, and reap the rewards of the creative energy we all posses. It’s OK to be doing “nothing.” It’s even OK to talk to yourself – just don’t let your lips move.

I cannot imagine the losses our society suffers because we are so busy doing that we no longer do nothing.

I am so thankful that Walt Disney did not have an iPhone.