Reading is the Other Meditation
Reading fiction is meditative. It's true that it transports you into another world, but that's not the important part. The important part is that it makes you forget your current one. In a typical meditation session, you observe your thoughts. You see them pass by. You practice detachment from them. The idea isn't to not feel them but to not be controlled by them.
The one thing people take away from meditation is calmness. The calmness with which they handle everything. Because they carry a certain emptiness in their mind. They are not constantly bombarded by thoughts. They have practiced living without those thoughts. So the world bothers them a little less because, without negative thoughts weighing on them, they have better control over their lives.
A good story does the same to you. It not only takes you into a new world, it also frees you from the existing one. And this is important. Because the moment you are transported, all your worries, all your negative thoughts, those negative feedback loops, cease to exist. At least for a while. Read for an hour and for that hour you don't feel anything.
You are aware of your surroundings. You are awake enough to notice your phone. But you are engrossed in a world, feeling emotions without being affected by those emotions, and observing a world without any attachment to it. You are watching consequences unfold without them altering your life. What do you think such a state does to your mind?
There's a feeling of lightness you experience once you close the book. As if you are seeing the world with new eyes. As if everything deserves a fresh perspective. For a moment, you feel you are encountering everything for the first time. And that feeling is equivalent to how you feel after a long meditative session.
If you constantly struggle with overthinking, if too many thoughts overwhelm you, if you are trapped in those imaginary conversations where you feel you could have said something sharper but didn't, if your mind is drowning in too many voices, you should just grab a book. A good five-hundred-page novel, from any fictional genre of your choice, will heal your mind.
Anyone who dismisses fiction as having nothing to offer is forgetting that the same logic applies to meditation. You are just sitting idle, doing nothing. But that's the whole fucking point. Your mind is not a dustbin you are obligated to fill with all the trash you encounter. And as for the people who feel drowsy when they read, I will not dignify lethargy with a response.
So go ahead, grab a paperback from your local bookstore. Any novel will do. Read for at least an hour a day, if not more. Go to bed with a book. Take a book on your commute. Basically, don't let that book out of your reach, lest you forget about it. I wish you a mind free from all the worries and noise.