In general, we spend a large portion of our lives being expected to read. English is one of the only subjects students are required to take through senior year of high school (and, if you didn't test out, freshman year of college), and some might ask the question, “Why?” Why bother reading in the first place? For one thing, it can be enjoyable (especially if you're not being told to read a specific thing for a class), but for another, literature can provide us with some vital life lessons. Here are the top lessons that I've come away from books with.
1. The mistakes you learn from don't have to be yours.
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We're always told that the good thing about making mistakes is that you don't have to repeat them in the future. That said, you can live vicariously through fictional characters when you're reading, and when you see them making Bad Life Choices (looking at you, Jay Gatsby), you can pretty easily see the consequences of those actions without actually having to make them yourself.
2. Just because you have similar interests with a group of people doesn't mean they're good.
Richard Papen, the protagonist of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, winds up spending most of his freshman year at college with a group of other Classical Studies students. He also ends up tangled in several murders that the group is almost wholly responsible for. This isn't to say that everyone who has the same hobbies or interests as you is going to end up murdering people, but it does remind you that just because someone can wax poetic about Ovid doesn't mean they're the kind of person you want to hang out with.
3. A greater sense of empathy.
Alright, so this might sound kind of weird, but it's scientifically proven that reading literary fiction does make people, in general, much more capable of empathy. That means you're better able to feel for other people's emotions, and it also means that reading (in theory) should make you a more emotionally mature person.
4. If you love something, sometimes you have to let it go.
It's sad and it hurts, but we can't always hold onto the things (or people) we love. We learn that early on in children's literature like The Little Prince.
5. How to be a better writer.
The best writers are usually writers who read a lot. When you spend a lot of time reading, you're looking at how successful writers work—and it's not learning through osmosis, exactly, because reading is an active process, but it's a way to sharpen your own writing skills without having to hit the keyboard yourself. Besides, people who read a lot tend to have a much wider vocabulary, which doesn't hurt.
6. Appreciate the things around you.
When you read a story, some of the things that can really stick with you are small details: The coffee rings on a living room table, the feel of sand underneath someone's feet, the movement of the clouds in the sky. Reading passages like that remind us to pay attention to the world that's around us because the little things ultimately matter—a lot.
7. It's okay to want a lot out of your life.
I think a lot about Thoreau going to the woods and the statement in Walden about wanting to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” Partially because I'm currently shoulder-deep in the proverbial transcendentalist pool, but also because it's a sentiment I think everyone can get behind. You don't have to agree with everything Thoreau says, but he has a pretty good point about trying to get as much out of life as possible.
8. You're not the only person going through a difficult experience...
When we're at our lowest points, sometimes the best thing we can do is seek validation for our feelings. Literature provides us a point of reference for our own experiences. If you aren't always confident vocalizing whatever you're going through (and therefore don't want to talk to your friends about it), there is without a doubt at least one book in the entire history of literature that has a character in a similar situation.
9. ...And it's possible to survive those difficulties.
When we remember that someone like Esther Greenwood survives at the end of The Bell Jar (even if Sylvia Plath herself did not), we're reminded that despite whatever we're going through at any particular moment, it is something we can emerge from. We might not come away totally unscathed, but literature can offer us hope when we need it.
