I just finished my first fiction book in maybe 10 years…or more. As a child, I read endlessly and it was all fiction because non-fiction was boring whereas stories enabled me to imagine and escape.
As I got older, I started gravitating towards non-fiction books, mostly in the self-help, psychology and philosophical areas because I no longer wanted to escape but understand. Non-fiction also seemed more productive. This was a subconscious determination that led me to stacking my bookshelf with dozens of unread serious books.
I heard or read somewhere not too long ago that if you want to learn history, read fiction. That intrigued me as my interest in personal history and societal history grew, but I hadn’t touched an adult fiction book in over a decade.
I am embarking on a two month quest for answers. Answers about me and next steps and meaning. This is not a new quest as I have been wanting to understand these aspects of myself for a long time but I am changing my approach a bit this time.
There’s that quote that says – “The definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting the same results.” If we want different results, we’ve got to take a different approach.
And here I am, heading into two months of fiction because perhaps if we want to understand ourselves, the answers aren’t so much in the books about how our mind or heart work but in the stories of characters who we can see ourselves reflected on the page going through their hero’s journey.
