As I work on the “Destination Reading” project, I’m more and more aware; there’s a big difference between an escape and a destination.
As a child, tween and young teenager, reading served as an escape. While I loved reading for other reasons (for discovery and out of curiosity, for example), I think I read *compulsively* primarily as a means of escape. I read to escape boredom at school, and I read to escape stress at home. I read to escape myself — anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, insecurity. To get out of my own head and circumstances and into someone else’s world.
As I practice reading as a destination in itself, or an activity intentionally done at a specific place I want to visit and enjoy this delightful activity of reading, I find myself confused and uncertain of what I’m doing and why.
Part of the confusion is from finding myself with a loose plan of reading, but no real need or desire to *escape*. On top of that, reading stopped being my primary escape route a long time ago. Once I was able to drive, getting in the car and tooling around became my main escape. Since then, many other escape hatches have opened up. I no longer compulsively reach for a book whenever I feel uncomfortable or bored; I’m just not in the habit of reading as a first resort to immersive escape. The craving is not as strong, and transitioning into reading-mode takes longer and feels clumsier than once upon a younger time.
The bigger stumbling block may be that I don’t have a clear vision of ANY destination. Of a vacation, of retirement, of a sabbatical. Of a secure, comfortable home. Of an attainable positive future. Of a real day off, free of guilt or obligations or worries.
I’m positive I’m not alone in this problem. Stuck between a child’s need to escape and an adult’s responsibilities. As kids we thought being a grown up meant freedom. As grown ups we discover it means being responsible for every single one of our mistakes, and still wanting permission and allowances to bring our dreams to fruition (if we even believe realizing our goals and dreams are possible at all).
I loved reading as a kid and young adult. Reading was part of my identity. I was a reader. If asked to describe me, I’m sure that almost everybody would have used that word — READER — to describe me, more than any other. I never got the idea that reading was something I could build my whole life and future on, though, or even my leisure time. You could build your life around fixing people’s hair or playing music or driving trucks, but just plain READING … no. Not unless it was part of something else: teaching, for example, or ministers. Reading for reading’s sake wasn’t conceivable. Who does that? Intellectuals, philosophers, and book critics. Assholes, in other words. Useless navel-gazers and snobs.
Even worse was that I didn’t even think it permissible to plan to read ON VACATION, if ever I were to be able to plan and go on one. Reading was not even something I thought was allowable to plan your entire weekend on. People are allowed to work, and people must be SOCIAL. Those are the only two *acceptable* options in life. Reading (and really anything pleasurable done in solitude) is an activity you only are allowed once you’ve fulfilled every single other possible conformist obligation known to man.
It’s a lot of work to do to undo this weird brainwashing … to get out from under the thumb of what I’ve taken to calling “The Tyranny of the Social”. So I’m practicing making reading a destination. Maybe that means making “bed”/time THE destination.