What Does Literature Mean to Me?-- 1 A.M. Post

I didn't plan on having a post up today because it was already midnight when I realized I hadn't scheduled anything, and I didn't have any quick posts in mind. After a rather stressful day, I decided to just get in bed and start next week's readings for my American Literature class. I was just flipping through my anthology when I happened upon 'pity this busy monster, manunkind' by e.e. Cummings, and something in me just clicked.

In the two minutes it took me to read this poem one time, I was a different person. I read someone else's words and got inside their head and out of my own. I felt something very huge, from just a fifteen line poem. I was calmed, and confused, intrigued and enlightened, I saw both the beauty of the world and the ugliness of the world- all in two minutes.
And as I read the poem again, these feelings shifted and intensified.

That's why I love literature. Because it makes me feel and it makes me think. It makes me get out of bed at one o'clock in the morning to write a post dedicated to it, and it helps me fall asleep at three o'clock in the morning when something is running through my brain over and over. It makes me nod my head in agreement to the thoughts someone had a hundred years before I was born, and it gives me the ability to emphasize with situations I have never been in and never will be in.

Literature is such a huge part of my identity, and who would I be without the words and thoughts of all of these other men and women floating around in my head? Who would any of us be without the words and thoughts of others running through our heads? Who would we be if there was no one to tell our story, or no one who understood our story?

Literature is so powerful- in all forms. Story telling is essential to human existence, and we sure have found beautiful ways of doing it.

"--listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go"

- e.e. Cummings