When Life Gets Hard, I Hope You Turn To Books

When life gets hard, and it certainly will, I hope you turn to books. Within countless pages, among hundreds of stories, you can live a thousand lives and travel a thousand places. When kids are mean, or adults don’t understand, and you feel a little lost and more than a little alone, I hope you turn to books.

The precise book can call out to your soul, it can show you a mirror and you will know, deep down, that at one time, in some place, someone felt exactly like you. You are not alone. You can make friends between the pages, you can make sense of emotions you can’t quite comprehend, or you can escape to a place where no one knows your name and where fiction might lend a hand. Between the words of someone you’ve never known, through the actions of a person long buried and gone or who might never have existed at all, you can find a home.

I hope when you need to retreat, when you can’t catch a break, you turn to reading. Some turn to drink, others to drugs, some inflict pain or wallow in misery, instead, I hope you turn to books. Let them be your catharsis, let the pages bring you sweet relief, let them bring you courage and restore your ambition.

Life will catch you up, it will get you down, it will hit until it hurts. The hours will grow shorter and the days longer until you’re sprinting to keep up. When you fall, when you’re close to giving up, I hope you turn to books. Fact or fiction, take heart in the dragon slain and in the trial over come, remember you can do anything, when you turn to books.

In the darkest hours, in the deepest nights, that’s when we discover our personal light. No lesson was ever learned from perfection, for every wrong committed, there is a right. When others are drawn to selfishness and cruelty, and everything seems bathed in shades of vapid grays, I hope you grab for a book. Find the color, find the light, and remember what it means to be right, what it means to be real, what it means to be you.

But when you can’t quite remember who you are, or where you came from and have no idea where to go, I hope you clutch a book. People will hurt you, they’ll mend and then break you, and they’ll never say why and you’ll never know how. When you need answers to all your questions, when your heart needs a safe place to stay, I hope, instead of greedy hands, you find comfort in books.

But when the time comes to live, to pave your own path and find your own truths, I hope you set the books aside, and lead a life worth writing down.