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This week I've been on a reading fast. It has been more like a media fast. I have banned myself from TV and movies as well. It is something I'd recommend to everyone.
I probably won't be able to list all the benefits and all the things I've learned until I go back to reading again. I have learned about the various ways in which we use things and activities as addictions and obsessions in order to avoid dealing with other things in our lives. The word addiction is not reserved solely for substance abuse. Anything we do repeatedly and in excess would qualify as an addiction for me. Before this week I would jokingly comment to others about my crazy reading life. I would laugh gaily as I described the 17-30 books I was reading at once. The other person would screw up their face and then smile in bewilderment as I tried very hard to remember all the titles. My addiction was encouraged. Reading is considered wonderful and educational in our society and therefore no one ever thinks there COULD be an excess of it. But there was in my life and I knew it. I was committing myself to too many things -too many books, too many thoughts, too many projects and too many people at once. This did serve a purpose for me. I didn't understand this until I stopped reading. When I'm reading "all these books at once" and have many projects I'm committed to I can maintain a sense of constant chaos and busy-ness. Because I tend to be more of an "unschooler" I often find it hard to justify myself to others if I'm not really busy. If I could say I was busy and breathlessly list all my activities they chances were higher that the person on the other end would find something I was doing satisfactory. I was trying to squelch their doubts.
Maintaining chaos was another thing. I felt overwhelmed and bewildered for so long last year that I must have forgotten how not to be. Just feeling overwhelmed and looking at the chaos prevented me from feeling what I was really feeling. I could avoid all the doubts that might bubble to the surface. I could avoid noticing that my self-esteem needed replenishing. I could avoid so many things that chaos became a convenient drug to numb me.
I cannot count the number of times I have sat and watched more than one television program in a row just to be able to spend time around my parents. I didn't consciously realize I was doing this until I thought about what television I was watching and asked myself why I chose to watch it. I have also "read" a huge number of books I didn't really like (and didn't remember when I put them down!) just because someone else thought they were necessary to my education. Unfortunately I get a lot of those as a homeschooler. My addiction to too many books came in handy once again in this area because I could shrug off suggestions for more reading by being constantly overwhelmed with my own reading selections.
Even though I have basically pulled myself out of the rat race and the life of constant rush, the rest of my family is still getting there. Most of the time everyone is too exhausted to do much besides watch TV or quietly read a book so I tend to follow suit. I guarantee that if you begin to take an inventory of the books you read, the news and television you watch and other media you stuff into the spaces you will begin to see that as much as 90% of your intake is mindless. We do it out of habit, to "kill" time, to avoid silence and being alone with ourselves (and our emotions), to numb us, and to "rest" without looking like we're resting. It is definitely more acceptable to society in general and ourselves especially to watch TV or read than just to stop and breathe deeply, take a nap or meditate. But the television serves as a drug in this way. It doesn't actually relax us or give us "time" or an "excuse" to rest. It numbs us and makes us forget the pain for the moment. But when the a little while after the TV has been turned off we return to our fast heart rate, our worries, and our craving for another quick fix, another dose of media to crowd out our impending emotions. The very devices we use to calm ourselves only prolong our chaos.
My main point is that anything can be an addiction. Whether we use food, heroine, TV, over-exercising, over-work or under-sleep we quickly get to toxic levels when our motive is to avoid something. It really has to do with our intentions or our hidden intentions. This is why it's good to have a week without distractions and our chosen drugs. In the silence and the withdrawal period you will find out what you are actually withdrawing from.
When I told people I wasn't going to be reading or watching TV this week I got a wide array of reactions. Many people were shocked and couldn't understand WHY I'd ever do something like that. WHAT would I DO if I wasn't reading or watching TV? When these people found out I also wouldn't be checking (or going near) my email because that included reading OR going on the internet they were flabbergasted. Others thought it was a good idea and were inspired to try it themselves. The more resistance I encountered in someone the more I found myself privately thinking, "Boy does she/he need a fast! They're addicted! They don't even know what else there is to do in life!"
I smugly thought to myself before this week started that it wouldn't be very hard. For the most part it hasn't been very hard but there have been moments when I felt like I would rip out my hair if I couldn't read just a bit of one of the new library books waiting for me. A few times I was overwhelmed by the amount of other things I could think of that I should have been doing and I longed to dive into a book and not think about it.
I knew when I got to chapter four in The Artist's Way and I read about the reading deprivation that I would be tempted to spend long hours on the phone with many of my friends. It was a bad habit I got into last year when I was feeling frantic. At that time it was a useful survival tool. Talking was about the only thing that got me through. Things were happening so quickly that I needed to talk (or write) for at least an hour every day just to process what had happened and to be able to get even a little sleep that night. But now whenever I'm nervous or anxious my urge is to reach for the phone and talk it off. Needless to say it isn't always welcome by my friends now that I'm "alright." We all need counsel from our friends at times but I would do it to get reassurance and to avoid giving it to myself. So I also made it my goal to talk on the phone as little as possible this week and to avoid the urge to pick it up when I was upset or bored. This increased the amount of quiet, space and time I had to "fill" and made it a bit harder.
The results of this week's withdrawal period were not too huge, nor were they modest. What I found is that I got a whole lot of little and big projects done that I had been avoiding and that had been taking up my energy behind the scenes. For three days (only one of which was a reading deprivation day) I cleaned and "purged" my room. I got rid of three garbage bags worth of stuff. There was one bag of paper (to be recycled, of course), one of junk, and one of clothes which I gave to a consigners store. I uncovered so many things I had been holding on to because I felt obligated or because someone gave them to me but which I didn't want or use. I uncovered a collection of about 300 pens and pencils-most of them new!- about 50 bookmarks, 30 unsent postcards and other odds and ends. I also got rid of about half of my book collection. It was very revealing to see how much I (the ruthless thrower-outer of our family) had been hoarding in my closet and under my bed! After that I moved on to my little sisters' room. My mother had given up on it and it was literally in heaps. Besides cleaning and purging sprees I painted my bureau and my ceiling. I don't just mean a little coat of paint, I mean turquoise, pink, purple, blue and orange squiggles and flames and blossoming designs. I practiced my flute, tried out a bunch of different kinds of music I wouldn't normally listen to, went dancing, wrote, sketched pictures, mended all my clothes that had been piling up for months and "fixed up" those drab jeans I never wear, I made up a song, cut out paper snowflakes, saw a few friends and laid around! Yes, I lay around. I did "nothing." It was glorious because I am always doing something.
So this week I've been on a reading fast. The temptations have been gigantic at times. I have learned a lot (for those of you who thought I was compromising my education by not reading). Once I return back to our media-crammed, information-stuffed world I plan to read less at once, minimize my chaos and be more mindful of everything I'm doing. It's always wonderful to hear someone talk about how they'll change the world but how can we do so when we aren't even aware of our habits and behavior patterns? I feel rejuvenated after this week. Purging is the perfect theme. I have purged all the bad attitudes, habits and junk from my life and now I'm ready to return to the world renewed.
I hope you'll be inspired to try a reading fast of your own. Happy fasting!
~Laura