Reading Addiction

I get on reading kicks sometimes.  I mean, I'm almost always working on a book, but sometimes I read all books by the same author or all books with the same focus.

Right now, I'm on an addiction kick.

I know that sounds completely depressing.  I actually worried that it would be when I started reading the first book, a father's account of his son's drug addiction.  Heartbreaking in so many ways.  But, also fascinating in that way that stories of addiction give so much insight into how the brain works or how people are influenced, for good or for bad.  Or how important it is for people to have close ties with others, how addictions can harm those ties and make people so different from what they once were.

I started reading a book the other night.  It's written by a recovering addict.  I also watched a short interview with the author who said that he wanted to write the book, in part, because he wanted to show young people that there are others who have the same dark, depressing feelings.  He remarked that there were many authors he'd loved when he was younger, authors who expressed such dark feelings and let him know that he was not alone.

In some ways, I really understand that.  Sometimes I think that we have to just cut to the chase and be honest about our failings and fears and the dark sadness in our hearts.  Sometimes that's the only way we can find out we aren't alone and let others know that they aren't alone either.

But, there's another part of me that approaches those ideas with caution.  I guess it's that part of me that says we have to be careful with the way we talk about those things.  Are we looking at the darkness of the world around us, of our own tattered and broken psyches, and seeing that darkness as something we want to overcome?  Are we seeing that though, yes, darkness does exist, that isn't where we want to stay?  Or are we just allowing ourselves to go deeper into the muck and ugliness of life, saying that it's good to discuss such things because they are true?

I'm not a Pollyanna, though I sometimes do play the Glad Game.  I know that harshness exists in life.  I've dealt with it, and I know it's true.  But I also know that beauty is true; love is true; joy is true.  And I think that maybe those are the things to cling to, the things that will bring us out of darkness.  And I think that may be why the Bible talks about meditating on things that are beautiful and true and pure.  Perhaps God knew that, in our understanding of evil, we'd gravitate toward it as a way of understanding life; perhaps that's why He steered us toward what is better, what is holy, what is lovely.