Are you the type of reader that is loyal to a single book, holding strong to the finish, before opening another? Are you a reading philanderer who can help but look at other books, listen to them, and even dive into them while fully invested in another? Do you have multi books running in parallel or do they only begin where one ends like a bookish centipede?
I find myself reading by my mood. High anxiety can push me into reading like a squirrel preps for winter: in a rush, grabbing any book (nut) I can, nibbling at each one, and then burying it half-finished under another pile of books. Reading steadily and often is actually a reflection of my mind being healthy. I concentrate, absorb, live in those worlds. Which is interesting, right, that when I need most to lose myself in another world, I can’t either find the door or stay in that world for long.
This makes me think of magical fantasy – the concentration it takes to make a spell, for instance, and what happens when the magician/wizard/witch is distracted. So many examples of this in literature, but I will draw on my most recent dark fantasy read – The Magicians by Lev Grossman.
Grossman pulled in YA fantasy influences, namely Narnia and Harry Potter, and upleveled for adults. You have it all here. Adult boredom with scintillating vices (hello, everyday life) but with magic. Oh, you don’t want to pay bills? Sure, your school of magic will pay for your gap year until you “settle.” Oh, you don’t like the way you were raised, and you feel like the black sheep of your family? Sure, your school of magic will start to transform your parents’ memories so that gradually, they stop worrying about you and meddling in your life. Oh, you don’t know what path to go down? Sure, your school of magic will give you options AND embed a demon into your back for that one time you make an egregious error in judgment and cross the line into dark magic.
More to my point is the fact that this young group of adults does step in some literal shit, and the main character (debatable whether he is likeable, but I find him human, which is relatable at the least) completely freezes up. His mind is overwhelmed by fear, by the pressure to perform, and by love for the rest of the group in danger. His former girlfriend saves the hell out of his ass, but at a hugely significant cost. The difference between him and her in this moment? She had been preparing for this. She had her head in the game. She knew how to harness her emotions into action.
A quote I wrote down recently – “Structure means having a system in place for when things go wrong. Discipline helps you show up for yourself and your goals even when it is not easy or fun.”
As humans, we are emotional creatures. We may start a day with a very different emotional lens than we had yesterday. Our brains are strong enough to help us choose the emotional clothes to wear that day, but we have to pick up the queues that we are in need of self-intention and self-love. For me, structure allows me the awareness to pick up on these queues. Am I reading like a madman and finishing absolutely nothing? Ok, discipline kicks in and I slow it down, choose to clothe myself in compassion, and recharge my batteries. Recharging can look like getting that one thing off my to do list that is sapping my energy vis a vis procrastination, or it may mean spending time outdoors with dogs, fresh air, and birdsong. Or, it may mean laying on my couch binge watching a true crime documentary.
In Eat Pray Love, the movie (I have avoided reading the book/watching the movie for YEARS because I thought it would be too self-helpy in a pathetic, unintelligent sort of way but it was not and I think it is a 10/10), Liz Gilbert makes it to India to spend time at an ashram, thinking it would be instantly more magical than her previous 4 months eating and drinking through Italy. It wasn’t. It was much harder. Why? Because Italy was a distraction, and India was when the self-work started. As a friend of hers explained it, to get to the castle, you have to cross the moat. Structure is the ability to identify and navigate the moat. Discipline is never giving up on the castle. What is in that moat, you ask? All the stuff Lev Grossman’s characters experienced – sex, drugs, lack of self-esteem/confidence/worth, alcohol, interpersonal squabbles, mistakes, wrong turns, etc. etc. etc. But the real question is what is in the castle. The castle, for me, is deep self-love. It is what I strive to attain, more than anything else, because with self-love comes resilience, stability, consistency, a sense of humor at the wrong turns, curiosity, and maybe even a touch of distance at what I do/what happens to me.
What’s in your castle? And are you practicing your magic? It’s that magic that will get us there.
