We all know that feeling, you just finished that mind-blowing piece of literature, that struggling character finally reached a beautiful conclusion and for a single moment you feel like you can see through the universe.
Then you wake up from your ecstasy. You realize that even though you just discovered the secret to life, you still have to go to your job the next day like nothing changed, the cold weather is pressing on you and while your beloved fictional character may has reached its conclusion and walked off to a beautiful sunset in the last closing scene, for you that isn’t the case.
Fictional characters from which we learn so much struggle and after the story they are often fine, but you have to keep going. Your story doesn’t end and actually it starts to be frustrating, all those people struggling in your books, finding a solution and living happily after, when you don’t get the privilege of a “and he lived happily ever after”.
Life contains suffering, you will feel stress, you will feel anxious at times and that will all be inevitable. The only thing that you have control over is choosing for who and what you’re willing to suffer. You can feel stress about a business or job, but if that job has sufficient meaning, for example: you help people or create something beautiful. Then you would never even think about switching your daily life for a “walk of to the sunset and living happily ever after”. Ofcourse literature and fiction can be used as an escape from life, which is fine. But if you feel like you escape too much from reality or just read in order not to think about your own life, then I would suggest you switching something up in order to have a bigger sense of purpose in your own life and you don’t drown in someone’s made up world, but instead u use it aside from the enjoyment you get out of it to learn from and eventually apply to your own life, how subtle it may be.