For You, The Book Lover

For you, the book lover. You diving into the pages of a book as if you were diving into the sea, with the familiarity of arriving at a place you know well, while at the same time experiencing the feeling of suspense and mystery and not knowing what will happen next .

For you who know the  joy of hiding in a good book on a rainy afternoon. You sitting on the couch and letting the hours fly by and can’t understand how boring that can be for people, with so many stories to discover, so many lives to dream about…

For you, who has lived thousands of lives, known hundreds of worlds and traveled through time. You who have felt, laughed and cried because of the written word. You who know human nature because you have stood in the shoes of countless characters.

You probably remember books that marked a ‘before’ and ‘after’ in your life. The first story that amazed you as a child, the readings of your adolescence that left their mark on your personality, and books that you have  now read as an adult that have helped you get through difficult periods.

It’s likely that you prefer a particular time:  maybe in bed at night before falling asleep, or maybe to kill time while traveling by bus or train, or maybe you’ll read in the afternoon, when you’re done. your duties. Or maybe you’ll save this moment until the end of the week as a reward.

You know that reading can be an escape:  you forget your problems and the small dramas of the day, to enter a new world. It is a magical moment where the negative thoughts cannot take over your mind, a small moment free from stress and worry.

But reading is more than a simple escape from reality. It can  create space and cause you to distance yourself so that you can learn, think creatively and empower yourself emotionally. In this way, reading can serve as a way to solve your problems or at least as something that can help us deal with them better.

As readers, we already know about these benefits, but recently science has given us a reason too:  did you know that reading lowers the risk of dementia? It seems that reading, especially fiction, improves our cognitive reserve and keeps us fit in our old age.

In addition, several studies have confirmed that  reading improves our emotional intelligence and empathy,  that amazing human ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and understand that person’s position. This was already expected by the philosopher Schopenhauer when he stated that “reading is thinking with someone else’s brain rather than your own”. Cognitive psychology and neuropsychology have confirmed this line of thought.

These discoveries are important because if you delve deeper into the research, more and more studies can be found that tell us how  reading improves our concentration, memory and ability to connect concepts,  just to name a few benefits. This shows that the time you spend reading is never wasted: you always earn more than you lose.

But we should not kid ourselves: it is not necessary to know these advantages or list them all, to know what is best about reading. Reading is a unique experience, a great addiction with no negative effects and an absolute joy for those who are addicted.

For you who recognize the addiction and who have read this article with a smile of recognition, because you know what I am talking about. For you, who, like Borges, cannot imagine a world without books. This article is for you, the book lover.