There is a certain comfort in reading a book or a show that you are well familiar with. It is somewhat similar to returning to a place after a long exhausting trip. You are aware of what is about to happen, and you would like to experience everything once more. It is reassuring in a world where there is so little to predict. It is all there to wrap you like a warm blanket with the same characters, the same lines, maybe the same music or inflection.
When you were watching your favorite show once again, you are no longer seeking surprises. And you know already the twists and the endings. Rather, you start noticing the minor details that you had not noticed earlier. It could be the jumpiness of the eyes of a character in a tense scene as he or she moves, or some small detail of a scene in the background that holds as much visual weight - suggestive to some greater story of what lies inside: a whole novel in snow. You are aware of the strata of it more with every watch, you are impressed by something renewed. You get the opportunity to enjoy it, rather than rushing to know what is in the next line.
It is even more intimate to re-read a favorite book. Author Reading: It is the intimacy of being in possession of a story which you loved as long as it moved your heart. It seems to be a text you have known and not known, somehow both, each time you read it. You remember which person you were when you read it. Maybe you were more childish, more sentimental, or going through a hard experience. Once you go back to it, you can observe how you and the story have changed. Or a sentence which you used to shed a tear over might make you smile, or the passages in the book which you usually skipped might come to mind.
It is also comforting because of the predictability. Life is unkind, here it is unjust. But when you re-read or rewind up something in which you like it you know the sad parts will soon be over and it will get good. That certainty gives peace. It is a reminder that goodbyes can be joyful, and heartbreaks can be cured. You can experience feelings, but only in a pleasant comfortable manner.
Nor is it only nostalgia. It is connection. You become familiar with characters that appear to be your old friends. Their weaknesses, their laughs, their habits, you are well familiar with them. They are reliable as real human beings are never. When all the things around you are changing, they stand unchanged. Seeing them again is like bumping into somebody with whom you had lost contact. You have no need to. You are familiar with them and they are familiar with you.
Many of them consider it a waste of time to rewatch or reread something. But I think it is the reverse. It is self care. It is choosing not anarchy but calmness, harmony and not coercion. It is a leave of novelty, of the pressing task to abreast. The world never pauses and to go back to the familiar may seem like hitting a pause button. It helps you breathe.
Sometimes it is about memory also. The show or book will remind you that you were the same person who loved the show or book the first. Maybe you have seen that program on vacation in school or read that novel in bed covering your face. Those are the memories that are laced into the story. It is not only to the story but also to who you were every time you go back.
The best of it is, that there is never really any end to your favorite story. It becomes part of you. It grows with you. You keep it in your heart without telling anybody and whenever you feel that it is too heavy, then you re-visit it. Not because of what follows, not because of the excitement it will produce, but because of the feeling of calmness it will give me.
Therefore, when I revisit the show that makes me feel good or reread the book that I love, it is not a form of escaping the reality. Is it concerning a moving back and recalling those parts of me that I had left in these tales? It is the discovering peace in the known. And, to be honest, such comfort is priceless at such a moment.
