Escapes to Alternate Realities

About a week ago, one of my best friends said that he was no longer interested in reading fiction, feeling that those authors merely fed our "fantasies and delusions".  I told him that I guess I could live with that.  My mind hasn't let that statement go, however, working the arguments over and over.  Fantasies and delusions.  What awakens us from our delusions?  A dose of a different reality?  Can't books do that? Wake us up to a new idea or thought process? And as for fantasies, what's wrong with those, as long as we are able to live day to day with the reality of now?  Fantasies are our brains way of escaping into the world of "what if".  Granted, if one refuses to leave that world, or refuses to accept what really is, escape can be an unhealthy thing.  TV and movies are distractions from the reality of our lives. (Ones I admit to enjoying from time to time.) Drugs and alcohol can do this as well, though I can't advocate them. Too much pain and sadness can come from these, not only in the lives of the user, but in the lives of those who love them. Filling up one's own life with the drama of others is yet another avenue away from focusing on our own challenges and blessings.  Reliving the past over and over is boulder worthy of Sisyphus, a cycle hard to escape.  Choosing to read instead of doing chores and writing bills can have unpleasant consequences.  Being a grown-up means choosing the right time and place for the things we have control over.  The rest comes as it will.

Books have long been my escape.  A sickly child, the smog often kept me indoors.  Diagnosed with asthma at age two, I spent countless hours in the car going to doctor's visits, allergy shots, and to the emergency room.  The library and I became good friends very early.  If I didn't have the books, I'd be a totally different person.  Books can put you in a different place, a different time, sometimes in a different universe!  If anything, I have become more empathetic towards the experiences and feelings of others, because I have been inside the heads of thousands of different people, going through countless experiences that I will probably never encounter in my own reality. As I have matured, non-fiction books have interested me more, but when I want to read for pure enjoyment, there's nothing like a story to transport me. 

When I was young, I threw myself wholeheartedly into the adventures of Laura Ingles Wilder and her life on the prairie.  I know these books are based on her true experiences, but they are still categorized as historical fiction.  Homesteading was a grueling and often heartbreaking way of life, and one that has always fascinated this Southern California girl.  Imagine killing a hog and using every piece of it, including the bladder as a little ball to play with (as described in Little House on the Prairie.)  My last public library audio acquisition was Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.  Again, I picked the title because we had the book in my middle school library and I feel it is my sworn duty to know as much as I can about my collection.  (Good excuse, right?!?)

 Hattie is 16, an orphan who has been bounced from house to house, taken in by (sometimes) well-meaning relatives.  It is 1918 and her friends are enlisting to serve in WW1 to "fight the Kaiser". Hattie's overbearing Aunt has just volunteered her services as a chambermaid when Hattie receives news that an Uncle Chester she has never met has died and left his Montana claim to her. Hattie jumps at the chance to have her own place and get out from under the thumb of her ever-disapproving Aunt.   The book is written in the first person narrative and is generously sprinkled with letters Hattie writes to her friend (and secret crush) Charlie, her Uncle Holt, and to her hometown newspaper, as she recalls the trials and tribulations she encounters as a homesteader.  She has less than a year to "settle the claim" which includes fencing and planting and harvesting 40 of the 320 acres she has been given.

The book alternately made me smile and cry.  The antics of her persnickety cow and the neighboring children were interspersed with incidences of German-American citizens being unjustly accused of being enemies of the country and death by influenza.  She encounters bullies as well as the most loving people you could hope to have as neighbors.  There was more than once that I was glad that my waterproof mascara didn't let me down as I drove into work. 

So again, I will keep reading what I want to read and let others read what they want to read.  That's what makes the literary world go round, right?  As I was proofreading this piece and getting ready to post it, I turned over my "Simple Abundance" daily calendar.  Here is what it said:

 "Accepting our circumstances is a powerful tool for transformation.  Acceptance is surrendering to what is:  our feelings, our problems, the delay of our dreams.  Acceptance allows the steam of struggle to escape from life's pressure cooker." 

I love living in my reality where there are no coincidences.  Thanks for listening.