Remember that girl in elementary school who always had her head in a book?
Maybe she would occasionally miss lunch, and you wondered where she would go. You found out one day when you needed to return a book to the library after you ate. Remember how you saw her sitting at the table in the corner with her food and a book? And in middle school, when it became significant for girls to sit next to guys on the bus, she was often in a seat by herself. Her knees would rest against the brown rubber seat in front of her to provide a surface for her open book. Remember that? Remember how she was always so absorbed that hardly anything could bring her away from her story—but if you did catch her attention, she’d look up from the page and meet your eye with a half-smile?
Remember how she was a total b****?
No. You don’t remember that.
You don’t remember that because the girl who was always reading books was the nicest girl in school.
She might not have been the most socially aware or pretty or popular or even smart. But she was the nicest, and I think that her books made her that way.
(Calm down, Pratt: I’m aware that this observation is poorly-recorded and ill-measured, and lacks any statistically meaningful sample size. I certainly have not proven the causality I’m suggesting. I’m simply hyperbolically describing an intriguing tendency.)
Lasana Harris, a Duke neuroscience professor, explained the reasons for this nice-girl-book-lover trend last semester in a lecture on the neurological roots of ethical behavior.
He began by showing several videos in which simple shapes—circles, triangles, rectangles—changed positions on the screen relative to each other, retaining their color or shape. He then asked everyone watching to make up a story about what happened in the video. For example, I described something like this: Circle tried to become friends with Rectangle and Triangle, but they excluded him because he had no straight lines or sharp edges. He felt sad, so he went to the edge of the screen to seek consolation with the other circles.
The professor noted that simply by prompting us to make up a story and spend time in that story, we gave the shapes personalities and names. “The circle” became the friendly but naïve “Circle,” and the triangle and rectangle became “Triangle and Rectangle,” a villainous, straight-edged pair. We began assigning emotions: Circle “felt sad” and “sought consolation.” I described Circle’s plight with genuine empathy.
He explained that it is this capacity to make up stories that makes us act morally. When we tell and hear stories about others, we discover an impulse to seek to understand their behavior. Instead of simply ascribing universal negative traits to describe behavior that we find troubling in others, we seek to describe actions using impulses that we understand. For example, instead of assuming that someone who cuts in traffic is unforgivably self-absorbed, the person who fills his or her life with stories will imagine that said traffic-cutter is rushing to the hospital.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to go on a spring break that prevented me from having any cell service or Internet. I realized in their absence that now, since my laptop and phone have become so permanently glued to my person, I read a lot less. It used to be that if I had a bus ride or a spare hour, I’d read. Now, I browse Reddit and Facebook. I’m guessing we all do.
Over break, it became clear what I lost by reading less. I love getting to know—and growing to become—the characters in a book. I love all that I learn by reading books: not only brand new facts and information but also entire new perspectives. I love shutting out my old world and entering a new one.
But lately I’ve been thinking about how I am not the only one who loses out. Society loses something, too. Stories are so important to the way that we relate to each other socially. They teach us to reconsider preconceptions and try on new perspectives. They teach us to imagine the stories behind the behavior we see in the world. They teach us compassion.
Ellie Schaack is a Trinity sophomore. Her column runs every other Friday.
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