As a child I had an insatiable love for reading books. I was often to be found curled up like a cat in a sunny spot with an Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl tome in my hand, completely engrossed, eyes wide, pages turning at a rate of knots. To be fair, growing up in the 80s, we didn’t have the readily available screen-based entertainment that is so much a part of our daily lives now. The closest we got to that involved waiting for up to an hour for a very basic ZX Spectrum game to load up from a cassette tape. They probably display that type of thing in museums now, right?
Anyway, you get the picture. My life revolved around books. As I grew up I was drawn to English Literature academically and undertook a degree and a Masters in the subject – more books! With a few films thrown in for good measure.
When I was 30 I had a baby and tiredness, night feeds and, well, just wanting to stare at her beautiful face constantly meant that I was reading less and less. As the years ticked by I seemed to have fallen out of my book obsession and, with the rise of social media at this point, I was spending more and more on a screen instead. Scrolling through Facebook and Twitter became my new comfort behaviour. Man was it addictive. And, to be honest, not really that comforting! It didn’t offer escapism so much as a constant reminder of the rage and hatred and general unhappiness that seems to proliferate so many of these platforms. I was sucked in all the same though – it’s the way they design these things of course. And it was the chief way I kept in touch with all my newly found mum friends, to organise play dates and suchlike.
A couple of years later an unexpected letter arrived on my doormat one Saturday. ‘On Her Majesty’s Service’ shouted the print on the outside of the large and official looking envelope. My first thought was to panic – had I been caught by a speed camera or something? Thankfully, no I hadn’t. I was being summoned for jury service. Half of me was intrigued and keen to play my part. The other part of me was, of course, anxious about what might lie ahead and juggling a million childcare and work scenarios in my head, trying to balance how I was going to make this work.
But make it work I did, and a few months later I found myself sitting in the jurors’ area of a Crown Court, smartly dressed as instructed and feeling a little apprehensive. Let me tell you now, jury service involves a LOT of waiting around. In a reasonably small room, with a large number of strangers. Once you’ve been briefed and watched the video about what to expect and what you must/mustn’t do, you’re basically left to hang around and twiddle your thumbs for hours on end – just in case you are needed and happen to get selected to serve on a jury for a trial.
I glanced around the room and made some minor small talk with other jurors-in-waiting who looked like they might fancy a chat. Small talk is great but, let’s be fair, there’s only so much of that you can indulge in. And my phone battery and data allowance wouldn’t take a whole day’s worth of scrolling endlessly through good old Facebook and Twitter. Getting fidgety, I sighed and reached into my bag for the book I had stashed in there that morning in case of emergencies.
It was an intriguing little fictional story about spies, code breaking and a company that developed toys and games. I snuggled into my chair, opened the book and started to read. Within a few minutes I was transported back to that childhood state of pure joy and escapism. I learned a few interesting facts covered in the story. Did you know that the most popular letters in the English language are ‘e’ and ‘t’? Do you know about some of the standard code making strategies for sending secret messages? Did you know that you should only ever make tea with water that’s just coming up to the boil or just gone off the boil, never completely boiling water? I did, after reading the book. I was fascinated. I wanted to read more. I gobbled up the facts, remembering them to tell my husband later over dinner, knowing he would be interested too. My love for books had been sparked again.
During the next few days of jury service, I finished that book and started another. I’ve been devouring books again across the years ever since. I’m never short of conversation topics around family and friends because my mind is full of joyful facts and questions and interesting debates prompted by books I’ve read. I joined a large group book where I’ve gathered some great recommendations for books that I never would have thought to pick up before. I’ve read books that have made me cry, books that have made me laugh and books that have, quite literally, changed my life and how I look at the world. Some books have made me understand more about different conditions and diseases, some have made me question my own views and judgements about certain groups in society and have made me more open minded as a result. Other books have shown me different sides to debates and cultural issues that I might never have considered if I hadn’t read them. Books, I feel, have genuinely made me a more understanding person in recent years, I’d even go so far as to say a better person. They are addictive in a far more healthy way than social media platforms.
Spending more time with my head in a book and less time in the angry and gossip-fuelled addictive world of social media has been incredibly healthy for my mental wellbeing and it’s the path I will continue to take in future. Next time you feel despair for society or anger at a thoughtless Facebook post, take that energy and put it into reading a good book. I promise you, you won’t regret it. It might even change your life.
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