Becoming Selfish

May 9

There is a sacredness to libraries that will not and should not be violated. It goes something like this: the world is a very busy place, full of the gravity of people being stuck in time, lost to the demands of the urgent and important. We are forced to live in this world.

Libraries exist outside of this world. When you walk into one, you set aside all of your urgence for a space existing outside of time. Sure, there may be computers to cross reference the books now, but the errant yell will still draw the ire of all. The world is quiet here: see that you do not make it loud.

The books in the libraries—well, that’s another thing entirely. We can find ourselves placing them on shelves, pedestals of the mind, authors relegated to name-dropping and college coursework, the kind of “reverence” we assign to a CEO everyone mocks behind their back.

If the library is a place of quiet and contemplation, it is only as a diving board—a blank slate upon which to spring into a thousand worlds. Worlds you should enter not with reverence, but with all the beautiful selfishness of a pirate. You will slash the sails, empty the cargo hold, swinging a sword through the air as you ravish each book for whatever it will give you and, when spent, discard it for the last.

After all, the quiet world invites the symphony of the mind. These are not books written by priests, but fellow adventurers who once shared this same quiet space—they are offering you the best thoughts they have to offer, the best perspective on their time and on ours. Rip the words from the pages. Pillage the ideas. Take and take and take and when there is nothing else of use or interest, move on.

A horrible way to treat people, a brilliant way to treat books.

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