Most of us have a couple of everyday lives – the work life where we sport a genial smile, own a few versions of a fake laugh perhaps, and wear ironed trousers; the home life where we lose our keys in the depths of our couch, leave the remote control in the fridge, and wear 5 year old pajamas. Some have an added social life where we can forget we have three children at home, forget that we have a presentation to make tomorrow, and sometimes forget the way back home.

But… Have you ever lived a life as a ghost in a palatial 15^th century British mansion? Or maybe as a nymph in the oceans surrounding Mount Olympus in Greece? What about as a tarot reader in the piers of London? Perhaps a fantasy-loving teenager in rural Tennessee? Wait – a boy living in the cupboard under the stairs at Number Four Privet Drive?

Have you felt without any of your senses? Tasted the apple and lavender blossom flavored honey that is extracted in the fields near Moscow? Watched in agony as the kite runner child you adored is humiliated? Stood in the middle of a murder trial and watched with fury as the accused is acquitted?

I find in the pages of books what I cannot find without an expensive plane ticket or an impossible time machine. I have wondered many times why I cannot live these lives by watching movies and documentaries, and why only books get the credit for all of these beautiful things. I know the answer to that now – my imagination! An all-powerful formless Boggart residing in my mind that took the shape of not my fears, but all the characters and worlds that jumped out of those pages. No movie ever managed to do that to me.

I was not allowed much screen time when I was a kid, and as I was learning to live my own life, and before I had multiple everyday lives, I learned to inhabit the worlds of the Famous Five, the Malory Tower girls, Dorothy, and little Krishna. And just as I lived their lives, they lived mine too and they had a lot of fun doing that, really. They hopped on the “yellow brick road” which were the tiles in my living room, they tried to navigate the shape-shifting staircases that led to my flat, they tried to solve a particularly difficult case as I tried to decipher the ingredients of my Bournvita. Think about it – what could be more fun than living with a little brown girl in the sweltering heat of India – laughing as she figures out who the killer is, as she finds out who stole the exam papers, or as her Chemistry teacher screams at her while they all giggle from between the pages, happy at their mischief! Well, I’d like to think that they quite enjoyed themselves.

And just like you choose your poison – rum, wine, beer? – just like you choose your colors – blues, reds, yellows? – just like you choose your pillows – soft, firm, floppy? – you also choose your escape – books, movies, travel? I choose to read. I would choose it over and over again if I had to start from scratch, without a doubt, without a second thought.

Because I have lived a thousand lives. And I want to live a thousand more.