Picture this:

You’re standing in dimly lit room and in the middle is a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a fish tank filled with water and in the tank is a brown octopus with white tentacles. One of its tentacles holds a ceramic cup and in another, a black pencil. On the pencil, you make out an engraving: Age quod agis.

Now, are you and I seeing the same thing? There may be some variability of course: your red may be a different shade, your cup may be cracked while my cup is new, your octopus may be bigger or smaller than mine. But the most interesting thing we’re seeing isn’t the table or tank or the octopus, it’s the pencil. This is what we’re both looking at, and we both see it. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We’re not even in the same room together, let alone the same place – heck, we’re seeing this at different times.

But we are together. We’re very close. We’re having a meeting of the minds.

I sent you a room with a table and a red cloth, a tank, an octopus, a cup and a pencil. And you received it all. Everything. We are engaged in real telepathy.

Words in their purest form are magic. They give stories the power to travel across time and space, from one mind into another. They allow anyone with a basic education to face dragons, fall in love and explore universes without leaving their home. Through words, you surrender your life to the writer’s and emerge a new individual.

Do not forget that there is magic at your fingertips. Use it wisely.

“It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.” – S.I. Hayakawa