I woke up this morning feeling (as I often feel) like I have no freaking clue as to what I think about anything. And also angry. Then I spent my day reading and watching videos of people talking about books and I calmed down and even felt happy.
I don't really know what it is about books that makes me so happy. I've tried to turn it into a list of reasons before (http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2014/02/why-should-you-read-fiction.html) and also to meditate on it more poetically (http://aragtaghooligan.blogspot.ca/2014/05/how-books-help-me-see-beauty.html), but I feel it defies explanation.
I love literature the way some people seem to love each other: beyond reason.
This revelation makes me very aware of something: one way or another I need a career in literature. I don't know what that will look like and it is something that I have been at war with myself over ever since graduation started to loom.
I still feel a lot of guilt for having studied literature because it feels like I wasted my money selfishly. I went to school because I wanted to, that was my only reason. I did not go to get a helpful job or to gain skills that can aid me in making the world a better place. Although, in my defense, I also did not go to school to get rich, gain power, or because that is what was expected of me.
However, I do believe two things:
1. That it might makes sense to do what we are passionate about because the world may need more passionate people (although, despite not being a fan of apathy, I cannot prove this belief in an argument, I've tried.)
2. That books have power. NOT the power of inspiration. I have ALWAYS been wary of people who seek to inspire others. Why inspire others to do what you could just do? Plus I don't think that movies and books really inspire people to action all that much. It took me THREE YEARS after having watched Food Inc. to actually become a vegetarian. So what is their power? I have basically answered this in my other posts about books where I explain that they help us see beauty, improve imagination, empathy, and critical thinking. However, perhaps even more important is something I have never really touched on before which is that I think books are capable of assisting with healing. Books help us work through the shit in our lives. We try to understand why things are the way they are and what we make of the world. We can do this through both writing and reading. And it is a beautiful thing. Reading forces me to say "Do I agree with this character's life choices? What theoretical ideas come out of this story and what do I think about them? What would I do if I were in this character's shoes?"
This is why I am at a loss for where to take my passion. Although I think it is helpful to learn the tools of reading and interpreting literature, I am not that interested in those tools. I want to go beyond a study of how words work to create meaning to a study of how readers use books in their daily life to contemplate the universe and to figure out how to exist. And after all is not the whole business of life the figuring out of how to be alive? As far as I am aware there is no place where I can do this, yet, because most schools study the text alone and not its relation to the readers.
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