As I was getting a cavity filled on Thursday, the dental hygienist asked me, in one of those “lets get to know the patient so he doesn’t run away” moments, if I had any plans for the weekend. I said yes: to read Harry Potter. She seemed a little weirded out by this answer. I mean she was around my age, had children, and has otherwise better things to do with her time than read a book better suited to obsessive teenagers rather than neurotic adults.

I can’t think of any better use of my time than my weekend Potterfest 2007. There have been few things in my rather dimly lit life that have caused me as much emotional comfort and complete range of feelings as these books, meant for children, but cherished by this adult (and many others).

It is hard for me to pinpoint exactly what it is about Potter without getting too psychosomatic for this blog. Sure, I am all about being personal with you, devoted readers, but some feelings are my own and I cherish them closely as I would an old heirloom. With that disclaimer in mind, Rowling’s world reminds me of a cherished time in my life both past and present. In the past, it reminds me of a small window of time in my childhood. In the present, it reminds me of a four-year struggle I have endured in my middle twenties, a time when I read Harry Potter, along with all the other dusty books lining my shelves.

This latter period of my life I believe has been a transcendental experience, a new awakening for me as a person and a second coming of age, and coincidently, it has happened simultaneously while reading these books. They are to me (and millions of other readers) documents of joy and release, from a world of growing disappointment. If there is any great wisdom in literature – it is seeing your own world in the world created by another and finding something of value in your own experience by reading, witnessing, and experiencing the fictionalized life.

What the modern world has become has been disappointing. I suppose people felt that way before “modernity”. There is so little in terms of wonderment in our daily lives. I am, in this statement, getting dangerously close to embracing a form of nostalgia. Please bear with me for a moment. The Rowling world is one where morality is in conflict with immorality; where good and evil are reasonable terms to use, and where relativism is seen as collaboration with darkness. Her characters become more human because they can be seen as people within this paradigm, within the conceptual frame of human struggle, defined by her as the ancient conflict between love and power, good and evil.

This conflict is timeless and the lesson of it is something that is completely transcendental. For children and teenagers the Rowling world explains so much about what their later lives will encompass and how to react to the daily “battles” we all face. For adults, the books remind us that no matter what baggage we brought into adulthood, there is always a place for wonderment and speculation through a highly imaginative sphere that mirrors our own world, only with a reliance on magic instead of our modern reliance on technology. The people in both the world of magic and the world of muggles remain the same.