Staff Column: The lives I’ve lived

By Staff Writer Jessica Cao

The digital clock on my nightstand reads 3 a.m., and there is salt on my tongue from where it crept in at the corner of my lips. My fingers tremble when they reveal the next page, detailing the tragedy of a mother losing her son to a war he was too young to fight in. A sentence I read lands like a knife between my ribs, goosebumps blooming along my arms. I shudder and struggle for air as a fresh wave of tears blurs my vision.

Four times. 

I reread the line four times, certain that something in me was unraveled and fundamentally rearranged with every word.

When my life and emotions press in close enough to suffocate me, I pick up a book. Fiction, almost always, since its pages give my restless mind somewhere else to run — somewhere where my own worries get lost along the way. I read because I slip into another life the way some people step outside for air. I crave the ache and tenderness of feelings that aren’t wholly my own, wings sprouting from my back and carrying me to places no other person has been. I have left part of myself with every book that has asked me to sit with the unfamiliar pain, joy, and complexity the characters endure, and recognize myself within it. Storytelling digs up a part of me I didn’t know was buried and returns it transformed — weighted and more honest. No other medium is capable of this. No other form of art lets me sit so closely with another life and leaves me changed by the intimacy of it.

The stories I read do not end when the book closes. Long after the final page, I carry the lessons with me, turning them over until my thoughts become tangible. When I reflect, I press my own words to paper and find that there is a sacred power to language — how one human soul can be touched by another across lifetimes, distance, and culture. When I hold that power in my palms, I start to believe that I, too, have stories that can put the wind in someone’s hair or a pang in their heart.

What I have learned is that you must give up something in order to receive things in return. Stories demand vulnerability and connection the same way people do, only opening themselves to you if you are willing to offer attention, patience, and an open mind. Reading teaches empathy not through instruction, but by exchange. In a digital era where literacy is reduced to speed and comprehension, and empathy is labeled as performative, reading requires something vastly more intentional and difficult. When you lend the pages your time and your heart, they give you invaluable knowledge and new ways of seeing the world. In surrendering a piece of yourself to written words, you come away with someone else’s life and a clearer vision of your own.