Grateful for a Library

I am grateful for a library; that as a municipality, as a community, as a people, we have agreed that this institution composed of books and dedicated to scholarship is a public good. A library is a symbol. It signifies our shared belief that knowledge is for all, deserved by all; that each resident has an equal claim to a trove not of treasure but of information. Whether one’s dwelling is grander than another’s, we read as equals in a library.

In many ways, I feel reverence in a library. Perhaps it is the silence and the rumination that it elicits, or perhaps it is the smell of dust-filled books, but a library somehow is sacred. And like all things sacred, a library can guide but it cannot command. The chance to know more and know better depends on my sensibilities, if I am prudent enough to give this public good a try.

I am grateful for a library.