Vika Kandaurova 124e

I Looked For Peace Everywhere Only To Find It In One Place – In The Corner
With A Book
(Thomas Kempis)
Sooner or later every person feels the need to find some peace. Even those
who are always engaged into some activities, seem full of energy and enthusiasm
to move mountains, and know no rest sometimes need to reach this state of being
calm and quiet, and enjoy solitude. This inner serenity is what many of us are
looking for in this crazy spinning world, and for many people reaching peace of
mind is the purpose of life. So how can one do that?

Undoubtedly, there are many ways, methods and techniques to reach peace
of mind. One can practice meditation and alternate breathing, leave the city to
merge with nature, communicate with people, thus sharing feelings and emotions,
create something new or do some absorbing and interesting activity. Though,
probably none of this can be compared to reading. Psychologists have proved that
reading helps to reach the state, when one experiences emotional calmness and
forgets about everyday worries and fears. Moreover, peaceful reading is good for
brain as it reduces the stress level and helps to take the mind away from troubles
and problems.

Imagine yourself in complete silence (but for the paper rustling sound, of
course). Nothing disturbs you. You make yourself comfortable in your favorite old
armchair in a corner of your cozy room (probably even your personal library). You
open the book thus plunging yourself into an absolutely different world – the world
of the book. Turning the pages you get involved into so many events, learn about
so many fates and facts that you completely forget you are still in your armchair.
Now you are flying on dragons, or lying on the grass with a little girl next to a sky-
blue pond in her yard and laughing as loud as one can imagine; or you are hiding
behind the corner with a world-known detective trying to make no sound as you
are spying on the greatest villain of all time. And you completely forget that your
legs have got numb, or you are getting cold because you have not closed the
window. You are probably even hungry, but what is it in comparison with the
tragedies unfolding before your eyes on the pages of a book?

Now you are reading the works of the greatest philosophers who wrote about
the essence of being. So, turning the pages, you are looking for the purpose of your
own life, recollecting what may be important, making a long (or not long yet)
journey from your childhood to your age. You sit in your armchair with a pensive
smile on your face, your mind travelling over memorable events. Or you are
enjoying a historical novel, becoming a part of military actions that influenced the
course of history. Now you see the other side of history – it is not really what is
written in history textbooks. It is much more than the life of generations – it is the
lives of individuals with their fears and tears of joy; it is not only years and
centuries – it is minutes and moments. Is this all not able to move you to tears?
Does it not touch you?

How talented those writers were to create a whole new world, which makes
us forget about the real one! Reading a book we get filled with emotions that we
sometimes lack so much in our real life. We do not feel so “emotionally empty”
anymore. Reading is also work – the work of mind. After we complete a difficult
task, do we not feel satisfied and peaceful? We lived through so much with the
characters, empathized them, strained our minds and souls, experienced different
feelings and draw our own conclusions and life lessons. We now have some food
for thought and after we close the book, though we look a bit abstracted, have we
not reached this state of peace?