Fiction Helps Me Notice.

 I have a habit of always having my head down. Metaphorically. Always separating myself and the world around me and never looking up to see its mystery and wonder. Ignorance is not a great way to live, but I guess I’ve been ignorant to that truth of life too. What changed this, was fiction. Fiction was what showed me the world as I continued to have my head droop down, literally.

Recently, I read a story about a psychotic woman who tries to frame her husband for murder. And I saw myself in her. I also saw myself in a 21-year-old girl who has an affair with a 32-year-old married man. I saw myself in people that I would never have associated myself with in real life. Fiction shattered all my assumptions about myself and about other people, just enough to leave me with no identity and more of it at the same time. It made me realize how similar we all are. Small parts of a greater chaos. 

As a reader, you start seeing the world as stories. You start seeing yourself as a story that you’ve narrated your whole life. Every person can write one book, and that is the story of their life; narrated with their biases, their personality and their uniqueness. And realising that makes you wonder what others are trying to convey as narrators of their own books. 

Writing helps broaden your world too. Attempting to write made me realize that writers can’t write things they don’t know about. Yes, writers create fantastical worlds that shatter genre limitations, but it all comes from something that they recognize, and then mirror it in their writing. A fundamental truth. A truth that comes from the very real world that we are all a part of. And it makes you wonder how they wrote those psychotic characters that you saw yourself in. What truth did they notice in this world that you didn’t? 

And so, you finally look up. 

You get to see the diverse bunch of people you are amongst. You see yourself reacting to them. And you see them reacting to you. And this circle continues and you notice, for the first time, what has really been going on. 

A narrative emerges, very different from what you earlier had. You get to ‘see’ the other person, as a complex three-dimensional character whose story you are a minute part of, just like they are in yours. And you realize that the system is complex and chaotic and you get to notice the whole system (in awe). 

That’s why I love reading and writing. It helps me peek behind the curtains to see where the magic happens. And I yearn for this magic.