Saturday morning. Snow covered my car and the car park was a slippery pool of slush. No one expected snow where I live. I also didn’t expect to have the conversation I went on to have when I met a friend I hadn’t seen in ages, for coffee.
We talked about all kinds of things. I told her my dream of bringing out another book later this year and she told me about her university course in counselling. When someone tells you they want to counsel others, using mindfulness techniques to help them overcome the obstacles in their lives, you sit forward and listen. I was intrigued by what she’d learned and what she had to say on the subject.
She went on to tell me, however, that although she relishes the idea of starting a job as a counsellor, she struggles to understand why people even want to be a part of this world. She says life and the world is miserable. Nothing good happens, we move from one disaster to another and that happiness is an abstract concept that no one can really have in their lives.
Yeah. I know, right?
By that logic, we might as well all give up.
Is that why we read fiction? Or go to the cinema, come to that? Yes it’s a lovely escape for an hour or two, but you still have to come back to your life. Are there people who would rather read about someone else’s fictional life instead of living their own? I’ve spent hours contemplating our conversation after leaving the coffee shop, not really taking comfort in the idea that if I had a counsellor, because I couldn’t cope with my life, that I might be sitting opposite someone who couldn’t care less about their own.
When I write fiction, I get to escape. When I read fiction - same. I’m escaping. I get such a buzz out of creating stories, characters, settings and plots and that to me is happiness. And it’s also a wonderful feeling to know that what I write could be the thing that brings joy to someone else.
So now I’m wondering how much of what my friend said in the coffee shop is valid. Is life really so negative it has us reaching for books so we don’t have to face it? That said, reading fiction has got to be better than drug or alcohol abuse as a means of escape. Reading as therapy. Is that a thing? It certainly relaxes me and how wonderful to have selected the right book at just the time you needed to read it.
All of this rambling is just to say how I feel lucky to have writing. It has certainly been one of the biggest things in my life that has made so much sense. And it makes me happy. Nothing abstract about that. So I guess that means my answer to the above is Yes. To both. In real life I love the fictional world. And I don’t suppose you life could be any more abstract than that.
So. Back to you. Fictional World or Real Life? You tell me.