Reading Through Hard Times

The world is a disaster right now.

Not in an abstract way. Not in a someday historians will explain this way. In a right-now, hard-to-breathe, hard-to-look-away kind of way. The kind that makes your jaw tighten as you scroll. The kind that seeps into your body even when you’re trying to stay informed and intact.

There’s a particular exhaustion that comes from watching power be used carelessly. From seeing cruelty framed as strength. From realizing that the world being built is not one you recognize or want to live in. If you’re angry, scared, grieving, or quietly furious, I see you.

And still, we read. Not because books are an escape from reality, but because they help us survive it. Because reading slows the nervous system when everything else is trying to accelerate it. Because stories remind us of interior lives, moral complexity, tenderness, resistance, love. Choosing a book right now is not disengagement. It’s discernment.

Rest, too, is not giving up. It’s refusal. There is something quietly radical about caring for your mind when the world seems determined to fracture it. About lying on the couch with a novel when everything is telling you to stay outraged and exhausted. About turning pages when the noise wants your full attention and your last drop of energy. Reading says: I will not let this take everything from me.

Some days, reading might look like a few pages. Some days it might look like rereading something familiar because you can’t take in anything new. Some days it might look like not reading at all, just holding the idea that books will be there when you’re ready. That’s still part of the resistance.

If the world feels scary right now, you’re not imagining it. And if you’re reaching for books anyway, or longing to, you’re not naive. You’re tending something worth protecting.

Keep reading,

Susan