Delusional Me on The World Book Day
This week, I traveled through the wilderness
in grief and found healing. Last week, I experienced the joy of being the
world’s table tennis Olympic gold medalist. The week before that, I studied the
different tribal practices around the world that made up the civilization as we
know it today.
Who am I?
I am either a psychotic delusional person …
or someone who reads books.
I am not sure there is a difference between
the two. Being a reader does feel like being a high-functioning delusional
person, because when you read, it is more than absorbing information or facts.
It is about getting lost in a different perspective. It is about getting into
another world. It is about letting all of your sensory experiences be swept
along by what the character in the book experiences. It is about empathy.
Psychologist David Comer Kidd and Emanuele
Castano at the new School for Social Research, in a series of five experiments
involving 1,000 participants, proved that people who read literary fiction have
better ability to identify emotions in others.
When we read, our brains experience the
events in the book as if we genuinely experience them. In 2014, researchers at
Carnegie Mellon used fMRI to try to map brain activities of people reading Harry Potter. They found that when people
read about Harry’s first flying lesson, they actually experienced the feeling
of disbelief of seeing a person fly in their brains.
A cognitive scientists from France proved that
when we read about physical activity such as kicking or grasping, the region in
the brain related to the motor cortex related to that action lights up in the
fMRI. We genuinely feel like we are
kicking or grasping.
I guess it is not really surprising. When
reading, you are not really listening to a story. You are being conditioned to
experience that story. Take Tolkien’s book for example: in the beginning, a significant
portion of the book is spent trying to describe what the world is like, what
the people look like, what their livelihood is like – perhaps more than the
story of the adventure itself. It goes beyond telling you what Shire looks
like. It takes you to Shire. It makes you believe that you are there.
When you read a good book, you do not jump
into the plot straightaway. You spend around the first 30 pages getting to know
the characters and the situation, the next 30 pages growing fond of them, the
next 30 pages empathizing with them and the rest of the book being them. You experience the sense of
urgency that they feel. You cry when they are in pain, and you feel triumphant
when they are successful in their journey.
Many psychologists and neuro-scientists
conclude that reading improves the Theory of Mind (also known as ToM), which is
defined as: “The ability to attribute mental states – beliefs, intents,
desires, pretending knowledge, etc. – to oneself and others and to understand
that others have beliefs, desires, intentions and perspectives that are
different from one’s own.”
In the world with so many dissents,
differences, prejudices, judgments and conflicts, where empathy has become a
scarce resource, the Theory of Mind is something we need more of. Understanding
others is what we need more of.
And here is how life is such a full circle:
as we start to understand others, we start to understand ourselves, too.
When I read “Manusia Bumi”, as I started to
understand Minke’s hatred to Javanese culture, I came to understand my
frustration to my own culture. As I understood his admiration to the Dutch’s
enlightened thinking, I understood my fascination to western philosophies. As I
learned his pain in knowing that the Dutch people that he admires is the
oppressors, I learned to separate the utopian western thoughts with the current
imperialism. As he comes to terms to being a Dutch-educated Indonesian, I come
to terms to being called an “oreo” (“white on the inside”). I spent the rest of
the Buru Quartet thinking, as I experience Minke’s struggles in colonial times,
what my role is in this fight against injustice in post-colonial context.
When I read “Gone with the Wind”, as I came
to understand Scarlett more, I got to see the Scarlett in me. I understood that
I, too, have my Ashley, the desire I fixated on but not one I really need; I,
too, have my Rhett, the one I have taken for granted; and I, too, have my Tara,
the one that gives me strength and the one for me to protect.
When I read “Where’d You Go Bernadette?”, as
I understood how Bernadette lost her identity in the routines; I asked myself,
“am I still here?”, “Where’d Melany go?” Has Melany lost herself, replaced by a
woman who has become comfortable in her own routines?
When I read Adultery, I wondered if I am, too, faking my happiness because
everything seems okay – and do I read books to “cheat” from my life?
It is ironic: I read books to be delusional
and to escape reality, but I end up understanding reality more – others and
mine. The name of the game is empathy.
How do you play it? Read books.
By: Melany
Tedja
Environmental
Finance Consultant
Favorite
Books: “Manusia Bumi” and “Gone with the Wind”
#AksiBaca
Categories:
0 comments:
Post a Comment