How do we get back on track when the world throws us off track? I have an idea, and because you are reading this, it may work for you. Just read. Not news, gossip, or text messages. Just pick up a good book, find a corner with light, grab something to sip or nibble, and disappear into it. It works.
In my youth, when frustrations had me down, when a stress reliever was needed, when I had exhausted my outdoor options, done with homework, timed out from sibling squabbles, or on a long bus ride, I read. I disappeared into another world.
“Like what?” you might ask. Since you are doing the reading and I am doing the writing, I will imagine you asking me and give you an answer. As you read, or listen to my answer, you can imagine me exactly as I am, sitting here, eating pecans, in my wooden chair, looking out a big window at still-green woods, trying to ignore the loud, green parakeet to my right.
“Like what?” you ask, and of course, this is just me again imagining you asking me, since you might already know, or you might not want to know what kept me captivated – but it did – in my youth. So, here it is, as I grab another pecan, shoosh my noisy parakeet, and muss up my keyboard keys with oily fingers.
I read Kenneth Roberts’ books, all spectacular, pulling you right into the Revolutionary War, characters jumping from book to book, first in Arundel with real heroes of the day, later in Rabble in Arms, Northwest Passage, similar souls popping up in Boon Island, The Lively Lady, and Battle of Cowpens.
Filled with colorful visions – which populated my mind when read, maybe the way my parakeet (whose name is Grant) is yours – I forgot my troubles, and just read.
All of a sudden, I was there drinking hot buttered rum, my musket leaning beside the stone fireplace in a Boston tavern, listening to Cap Huff’s outsized stories, first in Arundel, then Northwest Passage. On other days, I would dream up the dreamy ladies who courted the big heroes, share relief when a battle sure to go wrong went right, and then, dozing first, slept tight.
Other days (Grant, please be quiet!), I would pull down a Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, or Issac Asimov, and take myself far from this terrestrial existence, far from planet Earth, a different solar system, a place and time where old problems were fixed, and others did not exist.
Special powers, levitation, magic without incantation, many suns and moons, epic battles fought among the stars would hold me like a tractor beam (they do not exist) or three-level chess (another believable fiction), until I was there, part of their celestial neighborhood, visiting whenever I could.
On other days, charmed by chance, enchanted by elves and hobbits, by an albatross on a foggy sea, a Silver Chair and Asland the Lion, I would journey into Tolkien’s world, or that of C.S. Lewis, there on a dangerous journey to a place filled with reward, risk and reality, congenial play for kids, no loss or cost, but also a spiritual metaphor, which once found is never lost.
All this I did sitting by a window or in a chair, propped against pillows in my bed, altogether here, altogether there. On days when I needed laughter, it was to Erma Bombeck, or maybe lighter still, a Mad Magazine, those back pages folded up for fun, or those ads for flying saucers in my Boy Scout Boys’ Life.
The key – and this is what really counts (sorry for all the noise my parakeet is making) – is that reading is one of Einstein’s wormholes (which may exist), or a tunnel in time to a place we need to go, where we can rest a while, venture into the vastness of space, read about “Gifts from The Sea” (Anne Morrow Lindbergh), or bravely dive “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” with Jules Verne.
If we need an escape from the hubbub, we can find a story – true or fiction – and pull the rip cord, plop down the slide for a happy ride, at the bottom close the cover a while, and smile. To borrow from Colin Powell, “It worked for me,” and that is why – if you want to put aside the weary world, let it turn and pay no attention (Grant, shoosh, now eat your seed!), just grab a good book…and read.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!
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