Permission to Disappear

Weekly trips to the library were a childhood staple. The adult section was on the ground floor, and the children’s section occupied the entire upper floor. There was no lift that I can recall, only an open, sweeping staircase that felt modern. While my mother browsed downstairs, my sisters and I were set loose upstairs. The only requirement I imposed on myself was that if I opened a book, I could sound out enough words to make some sense of the story. Beyond that small rule, the shelves were ours to roam freely. Later, with a sense of hopeful maturity, we dared to venture into the young adult section. Looking back, I can see that the freedom of those visits shaped how I learn, and that I trusted in my curiosity to explore new worlds at my own pace.

Those weekly visits offered entry into worlds far larger than my own. I was with Mary Lennox as she discovered her secret garden and wandered along its mossy paths. I followed Katy Carr as she plotted her next adventure and lost myself in Anne Shirley’s enthusiasm on Prince Edward Island. The library taught me that to disappear was not an act of avoidance, but a skill to be cultivated.

Studies show that six minutes of reading a day lowers stress levels more effectively than a walk or a cup of tea. What looks like idleness is actually recalibration. But in a world dominated by timesheets, billables, and endless internet tabs (I’m guilty of all of this), slowing down is rarely rewarded.

Psychoanalyst Bruno Bettelheim argued that fairy tales hold therapeutic weight because they move beyond the literal. Their strangeness offers symbolic distance from fears. An imaginary forest is safer to enter than a real one. I still find myself leaning on those old stories to understand the present.

Neuroscientists have confirmed that when we read about a character’s joy or grief, our brain’s empathic networks activate as though we were experiencing those emotions ourselves. In this sense, reading or viewing fiction is not an escape from feeling but a rehearsal for it.

Writers and thinkers defend the value of imaginative retreat. Stephen King said, ‘We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.’ Carl Jung believed that all creativity begins in ‘the play of fantasy.’ And Brenda Ueland insisted that imagination depends on ‘moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling.’ Without it, she said, we produce only small, staccato ideas.

Psychologist, Jerome Singer, wrote in the 1960s about ‘positive constructive daydreaming’ which is a wandering attention linked to optimism, creativity and problem solving. It arrives during undemanding tasks like showering, weeding the garden and vacuuming. My best insights often appear while I’m vacuuming. For me, it’s one of those moments when unexpected connections arise.

Imagination doesn’t have to expire in adulthood. It remains a cognitive tool and one that improves with use. Emily Dickinson wrote that ‘there is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away.’ Proust observed that ‘art multiplies the world, giving us as many lives as there are artists.’ In this way disappearing, into fictional universes is not a rejection of reality because you see more clearly.

With December almost upon us, and a summer holiday on the horizon, I feel the familiar pull toward the library. Maybe a little of that pull is nostalgia, but mostly it’s a yearning for mental space and the ability to step into other worlds. It’s a place where my thoughts can drift, rearrange themselves, and return quietly changed.

In my latest newsletter, I’m sharing the books I’ve reserved for summer. It’s an unread stack that I hope will do what the best stories do, and that is open a window, widen the room, and carry me somewhere else for a while.