An Ode to "Getting Lost in a Story"

Dear Readers, 

They say that reading gets you lost, sends your head into the clouds, and inspires you to daydream. 

As a rule, I hate being lost, whether in purpose or in a geographical sense. It disorients me, makes me long for solid ground. It's uncomfortable to not know where you are, and subsequently, who you are. Without any sense of reference, the sounds of a world you don't know can be not just unfamiliar, but terrifying. 

Getting lost in a book is a different kind of misdirection. It's intentionally aimless, a journey with an end you know you will discover by the end of the story– or several stories– and there is no need to get there with any haste. Sometimes, sitting in the middle, surrounded by characters and magic and different aspects of a brand new world, is all you really need or want. It makes the end feel like a goodbye, a departure from a place you learned to call home. 

I like to imagine entering the expansive world of stories as standing in the middle of a forest, with dozens of roads spiraling out from under your feet, the paths stretching so far you can't see the end through the trees. In front of you is a post so covered in signs they overlap one another. They are every shade of the rainbow, some faded and some freshly painted, representing places both old and new to you. 

Which way shall you walk? 

The forest whispers merrily that you should walk wherever you choose, that you shall be safe on every path, and joyful wherever you end up. The options are infused with fresh, nature-borne air and every time you crack open the spine of a book you breathe it in like it is the first time. 

Is it time to visit a place you know well or journey somewhere new? 

The power is yours. 

The power is mine. 

Lost doesn't feel like the right word, especially when the people I've met in the pages of books have shaped me, formed me into someone new, someone better. I can experiment by becoming someone else for a time or be the friend of a person I'd otherwise never meet. I can follow maps of worlds that exist only in my imagination and learn lessons my limited life experience might never reveal to me. 

I am a block of marble, slowly being carved down into who I'm becoming, my stone eyes fixed on ink and paper. 

If I had never picked up a Junie B. Jones story or a Warrior Cats novel or a Harry Potter book, all the way down to the textbooks I read for school, I wouldn't have gained new lenses with which to see the world or developed opinions on things I haven't thought of before. Through the imaginings of authors I'll never meet, I am taught different ways to live. I am whittled down into new forms, chasing adventures I've only ever read about. 

I have never felt lost, with a book in my hands. Even the presence of one in my bag brings me peace and security. With it, I know a little bit more about where I am going, knowing a literary family awaits my presence to journey anew. I'm not lost in a world, I'm escaping into one I'd much rather live. It's probably why reading a final page often makes me cry... I've made myself at home and then, without much ado, am forced to leave. 

I open the pages and open my eyes to my forest, my fork in the road feeling thrilling before I've even taken a step. And I know more than ever exactly where I'm going. 

Reading doesn't get me lost. 

I say it gets you found.