In a digital world of chewed-up news, easily digested content, and an algorithm that can understand you better than your own kin, reading fiction sounds, well, impossible.
Words splashed on paper, soundless, still, and uninviting, and yet Wordsworth’s promising “What we have loved others will love,” Shakespeare’s daring “I am not what I am,” and Browning’s bittersweet “I love thee with a love I seemed to lose,” feel like hope.
Thus, our current situation cunningly creates an interesting double discourse. On the one hand, we have the alluring digital world that can provide you with anything you could have ever dared to dream of; not only that, it can also be used as an educational tool, teaching you philosophy, politics, educating you in economics, the environment, and any subject you could think of.
On the other hand, fiction allows us to empathize, engage with stories, cultivate our spirit, and illustrates to us how we are all so heartbreakingly different from one another and yet so heartbreakingly the same.
The only way to go about our double discourse (do not mock it until you try it) is to approach it as a love affair. According to the wise Roland Barthes and the bible—aka The Lover’s Discourse—there are only two characters a person in this life could ever undertake: the one of the lover and the one of the beloved. “Which am I,” you might ask, and Barthes will promptly answer with a question in return—”Are you waiting?” Since fiction is unresponsive, stale, and bitter, we are doomed to be the waiter. “So,” Barthes would add, “you are the lover, since you are waiting.”
Then, since we are the lovers, let’s approach our beloved discourse diplomatically, let’s wait for a phone call and chase for an answer, let’s imagine that our lives without it would be meaningless pursuits, let’s wear our best dresses and curl our hair. Let’s misbehave and overread our beloved, let’s give it more than it asks for, more than it needs, let’s nag and then bring it to the beach with us, let’s soak our sandy feet and stretch our salty limbs with it, right next to us.
For the biggest loves are the unrequired, and the best stories are the open-ended.
Also read:Catastrophizing: why we expect the worst
