The transformative power of reading

Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes

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Stories have the power to lift us out of ourselves, inspire us, and help us forget our worries, pains and sorrows. Reading is not only a wonderful pastime, it can take us on adventures, help us work through problems and allow us to escape from the cares of everyday life.

“It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life (and) seek the company of a friendly book," President Gordon B. Hinckley of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said. "From the reading of ‘good books’ there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way.”

So what is the power of reading? Why is it that when we hear, “Once upon a time,” we just have to know what happens next?

In the words of Stephen King, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.”

Books and stories can shape our lives in so many ways, and it is never too early to help a child begin a love of reading. Every night my dad would come into my room at bedtime to tell me a story. He knew three fairy tales, which he repeated on a rotating basis: The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Bears. I never got tired of them because he was always adding new details and using silly voices.

Why is it that when we hear, "Once upon a time," we just have to know what happens next?

When I got older he read Wilson Rawls' "Where the Red Fern Grows" to me a few pages each night. I knew the story and was prepared for the ending, but he was not. When he finished, I learned later, he went into the bathroom, shut the door and sobbed. My dad showed me the power a story can have and helped me develop a love of reading that has brightened my life.

Books can lift us out of ourselves when we are weighed down with worries or sadness. We can escape, for a time, to Middle Earth, or tropical islands, or the ocean depths, or outer space. When life is overpowering, books can take us somewhere else and help us see things with a new perspective. We can lift our eyes from the page ready to go on, renewed and recharged.

While we are visiting these new places we can even find answers to some of the problems we left back home. In the book "Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life," Anne Lamott said, “For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

Readers can learn justice, fairness and morality from "Superman." They can learn the profound meaning of sacrifice and true charity from Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables." They can learn loyalty from Sam in J. R. R. Tolkein's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. They can learn never to give up in Watty Piper's "The Little Engine That Could."

Inspiration to dream and follow new paths can come from stories. Many scientists will admit to be influenced by the big ideas of science fiction to pursue a science career, and how many people became lawyers because of John Grisham?

Reading creates a connection with other people. Readers can feel connected not only to the characters in the story, but the author as well. In "The Catcher in the Rye," author J.D. Salinger wrote, “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”

There is also the connection you find with other people reading the books you are reading. J.K. Rowling’s "Harry Potter" started a worldwide community of fans who share a love for the characters and the story. "Twilight" readers came together by reading the books, and some started book clubs to explore other stories that inspired and excited them. Others get together just to celebrate the book they love with parties and events. There is nothing like talking to your friends about something fantastic that you just discovered in a book. Sharing and exchanging titles brings together a community of readers.

Sometimes the connection comes between sharing a favorite story with your children. My daughter experienced her first picture book, "Tiger Flower" by Robert Vavra, on the day she came home from the hospital. When she started school I put an index card in her lunch every day that had a continuing story written on it. She had to read every day to get to the end of the story. Now that she is grown with children of her own, we still share a love of reading and books.

Reading lets the reader experience a story as direct input into the brain. The mind is free to paint the picture of the story any way it chooses. The reader becomes the artist who paints the scenery and imagines the characters. The reader becomes part of the story, and with a good read you can experience the joys, sorrow, terror and love right along with the people in the story. It is a much more visceral experience than just observing a movie, play or television show.

Movies, television and the rising tide of technology seem, at times, to have replaced reading. But reading gives you things that you can’t get from watching. Reading exercises your mind.

Research has shown that one way to prevent or lessen the effects of Alzheimer’s disease is to exercise the brain. One doctor of Case Western Reserve University Medical School, Dr. Amir Soas, gave this advice for fighting the illness: “Read, read, read.”

Reading also expands the imagination, enhances the ability to focus and improves knowledge. It also, through exposure to other peoples and cultures, teaches empathy. We can fear what we don’t understand, but as we read and learn, the fear gives way to understanding and compassion.

Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, once said, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. Reading makes us better. It makes us kinder and more compassionate. It unleashes our imaginations. It gives us a world full of knowledge and all we have to do is open the cover and start to read.”

After attending BYU and the University of Utah for five years and not being able to settle on just one major I decided to be a writer so I could keep studying all things wonderful and new.