The Guilty Pleasures of Harry Potter

Laugh if you will, but for a lot of college students and adults, this pre-adolescent boy and his adventures have reeled them in. I even know one member of Phi Beta Kappa, who will remain nameless, who owns a pair of Harry Potter socks.

At first, it seems silly to enjoy young adult books so much, but after reading them, it doesn't take too long to see the pull.

On one hand, the books simply provide entertaining fiction written in an engaging, easy-to-read style. The characters also tend to be quirky in an endearing sort of way.

Harry Potter's friend Hermione has poofy hair and spends most of her time studying, but she goes along with most of Harry's schemes, usually has a solution for unexpected problems and, to the dismay of the other female students, wins the heart of a handsome visiting student. Hagrid, the gamekeeper at the school, looks fearsome but cries easily and tames giant spiders and other unusual creatures.

In each book, Harry and his friends also solve a mystery with many twists and bumps along the way.

Beyond interesting plots and characters, though, these books simply offer a world of fantasy and imagination. People can wear invisibility cloaks and walk around without anyone seeing them, look at a school map with moving figures for all of the people on the grounds or make potions that will allow them to temporarily switch bodies with other people.

Especially in today's fast-paced world, we don't often get to let our thoughts drift to implausible situations. We have been taught to question ideas and challenge what we see. Our professors instruct us to back up our positions, re-examine beliefs we've always held, and understand why theories hold true.

We've been trained to see life as it stands -- to notice the way the people around us look and behave, read the newspaper and follow current events, and make judgments based on facts. We rarely spend our days wondering about things that could never exist or simply doing something unstructured. Even time spent with friends often becomes ordered. We plan ahead of time to go to a party, play basketball or watch a movie. And, for the most part, we know what the event will entail.

Although people sometimes encourage us to "think outside the box," they very rarely do so for the sake of imagination itself. Professors might tell us to follow our crazy ideas or to write a first draft using as little of our conscious minds and rational thoughts as possible.

However, professors do not give this advice to provide personal entertainment or to make us more interesting people. They simply believe that these tactics will enable students to produce better work.

In the same way, the bosses of large companies might ask employees in a brainstorming session to give them their most ridiculous and unlikely ideas, not to add depth to individual lives but to encourage creative solutions for their businesses.

I can certainly see the point of rationality. If no one thought to set standards for employees or remembered to pay bills, our society couldn't function. We wouldn't have accurate medical research, dependable cars or computers or even running water. However, even if practical thinking accomplishes important business, the fact remains that many of us spend our days operating rationally and aiming for efficiency.

And, this favoring of precision makes it easy for us to have underdeveloped imaginations.

What we think about when we stop filtering our thoughts doesn't even matter so much. Just daydreaming about anything offers relaxation, lets unconscious thoughts surface and returns us to our regular lives and ways of thinking feeling refreshed.

Therefore, simply by sitting and doing nothing but musing, we can improve our outlook on life or even become more productive in our work. We aren't often asked to think like a kid who's told to believe that a fairy takes away his baby teeth, that a giant bunny brings him candy each spring or that a world could exist where boys fly on broomsticks or put spells on cars to make them fly. But, on those rare occasions when someone invites us to make believe, it almost makes logical sense to do it.

Marian Crotty can be reached at mcrotty@email.unc.edu.