"It does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live"

I am fairly certain that I've misquoted the title of this post in some way, but the point remains the same. And I realize that the picture I chose to go with this post may not seem to jive with the quote - but bear with me.

I am - as is not difficult to guess - a huge fan of stories of all kinds. Stories connect us to others, inform us of theories and opinions and facts. Stories can edify and entertain. Stories can evoke emotions or soothe them. In short - stories can run the gamut from being the most brunt conveyors of truth to the purest form of escapism. 

Today I was reminded that while the escapism provided by stories can be, on occasion, necessary to mental and emotional well-being, there is a flip-side for some of us. Avid readers will recognize the term "book hangover" - that period of time when you've finished a truly good book and you feel displaced. You can't move on to the next story, because you are still so firmly entrenched in the world created by the one you just completed. If it is not a work of fiction, you are so completely enveloped in the world of ideas and possibilities that it has created in your mind that it is hard to see anything else. 

The difficulty is that the world of reality around you just doesn't measure up. And while that can be a positive catalyst - causing you to seek out ways to improve upon your reality, whether by making changes to your actions or to your perspective - sometimes it can be overwhelmingly depressing. 

I am, for the most part, a fairly optimistic person. But I think that, with my devotion to stories, it's inevitable that there are times where I find myself slipping out of a story and not wanting to even try to function in the reality in which I find myself. When the emotions bleed over from story-verse into real life with an intensity that makes me wonder why so little in the "real" world triggers that level of response. 

I can't say that I have a surefire solution for this. I can't say that I even seek one out with a great deal of fervor. Life as I live it in reality is, for the most part, a comfortable - full of thanksgiving - kind of thing. I just wonder sometimes, if the kind of emotion evoked by a story is out there somewhere, waiting for me to find it. I wonder what kind of risk I'd have to take to search it out.