A child sits in a playground, knees drawn up, face behind a book. Perhaps it’s a girl with a comic inside her Maths book, while her friends shout and swing. To the outside world, she is hiding away, but inside, something else is happening entirely.

The way I see it is that when we disappear into books, we’re not escaping, but stepping into life more deeply. Books are portals not only to different worlds, but to different selves. When we read, we’re not only watching a story unfold, we’re becoming someone new. A wizard. A detective. A time traveller. A misunderstood alien. A brave girl with a sword.

Inside a book, we find places where rules are different, dangers are clearer, and courage feels reachable. Emotions and feelings we can’t always articulate are reflected back to us with understanding.

We read to feel something safely. To test the edges of who we are. To imagine who we could become. No matter how perilous the story, there is a profound sense of safety in books. The danger is real enough to stir up emotions, but we are held at a distance that lets us breathe. Stories give us fear without threat, sorrow without isolation, and hope without pressure.

And so the girl in the playground grows up.

As a teenager, she reads late at night, under the covers, when the world feels too loud and uncertain. Her book is a lighthouse: a steady beam in the fog of changing friendships, expectations, and inner storms. And the adult? She finds shelter in a book during the daily train commute, in the half hour before sleep, in the pause between responsibilities. She turns to books to live something truer than the chaos of everyday demands. Stories are a refuge where she can dream, feel, and imagine beyond the roles she inhabits. It’s where she remembers who she is when no one is looking.

So when we see that child on the playground, the teen staying up too late reading, and the adult behind a book on a train, we should understand that they aren’t withdrawing, but moving forward towards something like clarity or meaning. To feeling seen.

This is often why our need for this kind of sanctuary becomes physical. We seek out the spaces where stories live, like a library or bookshop. Here we hide in plain sight. Among the books, we are anonymous, but not invisible. We are surrounded by lives, voices and dreams, reminding us that we’re part of something vast and beautiful. Sometimes being near the stories is enough to fill us, ground us, and to remind us that we’re never alone.

Photo by Chidy Young on Unsplash