Gowher Bhat
There’s a quiet power in a good story. It doesn’t scream for attention. It waits. It pulls you in slowly. You’re halfway through before you realize you’re different. The world around you feels different. You feel different. Fiction does this. It changes how we see, how we feel, how we understand.
The Hidden Strength of Fiction:
Reading fiction isn’t just about escaping into another world. It’s about learning to live in someone else’s. To feel their pain, their joy, their fear. The best stories aren’t just told. They’re lived. And when you live them, you come out the other side changed. More aware. More empathetic.
There’s proof of this. Research shows that those who read literary fiction are better at understanding emotions. Better at empathizing with others. A 2016 study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 56% of readers who read fiction regularly reported being better at understanding other people’s emotions. It’s simple. The more you understand the characters in a book, the more you understand the people around you. The more you see their faces, their hearts.
The characters in a novel aren’t just figments of someone’s imagination. They are mirrors. They reflect parts of us, parts we don’t always see. And when you see yourself in someone else’s struggle, you start to feel for them. Not just pity. Real empathy.
Emotional Intelligence: The Heart of Fiction
Emotional intelligence isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you develop. And fiction helps you do that. Emotional intelligence is the ability to read people—understand their emotions, their motivations. It’s about recognizing what isn’t said. About picking up on the smallest details, the shifts in tone, the unspoken words.
Fiction teaches you this. When you follow a character’s journey, you don’t just follow their steps. You feel their pain. Their joy. You learn what makes them tick, what makes them hurt. And you take that knowledge into your life. You start seeing people not just for who they are, but for who they could be. Not just for what they do, but for why they do it.
Dr. Keith Oatley, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has spent years studying the impact of fiction. He says that reading literary fiction “helps readers to be more attuned to the emotions of others.” You start seeing life in shades, not just black and white. And that’s where empathy lives—between the lines.
Fiction doesn’t just teach you how to read people. It teaches you how to connect with them. It shows you that we’re all just trying to get by, trying to make sense of a world that doesn’t always make sense. And once you see that, once you understand it, you can’t go back. You can’t unsee it.
The Bridge Between Lives:
We don’t all have the same life experiences. That’s a given. But we all have emotions. Pain. Hope. Desire. These things connect us. These things make us human. Fiction teaches us this. It connects the dots.
Stories teach us about sacrifice, love, and struggle. A 2017 study by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) found that 67% of people who read literature developed a deeper understanding of social issues like domestic violence, financial hardships, and unemployment. Stories make us see things we don’t always want to see. They make us understand things we don’t always want to understand.
These stories teach us about resilience, about humanity, and how much we share despite our struggles.
The Psychological Benefit of Fiction:
Psychologists understand the power of fiction, too. Dr. Shyam Bhat, a psychiatrist in India, says that fiction gives us something that pure facts can’t: an emotional connection. “You don’t just know someone’s pain when you read their story,” he says. “You feel it. And that’s how empathy works. It’s not just understanding someone’s situation; it’s feeling it in your own chest.”
This is the magic of fiction. It doesn’t just teach you facts. It teaches you emotions. It teaches you to feel. And once you start feeling for others, you start connecting with them in ways that words can’t capture. Fiction doesn’t just let you live another person’s life for a few hours. It lets you live it in your bones.
Fiction: The Unseen Teacher
Stories don’t have to be long to be powerful. They don’t have to be complicated. The most important stories are the simplest ones. The ones that get right to the heart of what it means to be human. The ones that make you stop and think, “That’s me. That’s someone I know.” The ones that make you feel like you’re not alone in the world.
Ernest Hemingway, known for his succinct and impactful writing, once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Fiction does this. It says the things we can’t say. It says them in ways that make us understand them, make us live them. And when we do, we change. We become better at understanding ourselves and others.
Stories teach us how to be better people. They teach us how to connect with people we might never meet, how to understand people we might never fully understand. They show us the power of listening, the power of compassion, the power of empathy.
The Quiet Revolution:
There’s no loud bang when you read a good book. No sudden shift in the air. But something changes inside you. Slowly. Quietly. And that change is everything. It’s what makes you look at the world and see it differently. It’s what makes you see people as more than just their actions, more than just the labels we put on them.
The power of fiction is in its quiet revolution. It doesn’t shout. It doesn’t demand attention. It just changes you. And in that change, it makes you better. More aware. More alive. More human.
Fiction isn’t just a distraction. It’s a tool. A tool that builds emotional intelligence. A tool that builds empathy. A tool that makes us all better. Better at understanding. Better at connecting. Better at living.
And that’s the power of storytelling. It doesn’t just teach you. It transforms you. One word, one sentence, one story at a time.
A Call to Kashmiri Youth: Embrace Fiction for Your Growth
To the youth—reading fiction is more than just a pastime. It’s an opportunity for transformation. It’s a chance to grow emotionally, to connect with others in ways that go beyond words. Fiction teaches you to feel, to understand, to empathize.
When you read, you learn to see the world not just as it is, but as it could be. You begin to understand yourself better, and in turn, understand the people around you with greater compassion. The lessons you learn from a book can shape the way you interact with the world. It can help you manage your emotions, build resilience, and foster connections that truly matter.
So, pick up a book. Let yourself be swept into a story. It may change your life in ways you never imagined. One story, one page, one word at a time.
(The author is a creative writer, freelance journalist and English instructor based in Kashmir.)