Pages of Hope

We go to literature to be changed.  -- Maggie Smith

                        
I was taken captive by a book last week.  I tried to resist.  Every couple of hours I turned off the light and closed my eyes, but sleep would not come.  The book kept whispering to me. When I squeezed my eyelids tighter, the whispers grew louder.  I thought a few more pages would satisfy the whisperer and tire me out, but no!  At 5 AM, I closed the cover on the last page and then lay in the light of early dawn savoring what I had consumed. I was tired the rest of the day, but I had no regrets.  The story still stirs in me today.
 
Language is a miracle.  And so is the power to read and to write.  It is a gift I would like to give to everyone.  It is the rich inheritance I leave to my daughter who is a reader too.  When you are a reader your life and your thinking are shaped by a chorus of voices, of possibilities that give flexibility to thoughts and points of view.  Words change us.  Yes, they have the power to harm, but more often, they teach us and guide us and heal us, and sometimes they save us too.

Words on a page are a commitment. Handwritten, or printed and published, there is no turning back.  A writer exposes and is exposed making writing an act of bravery.  Committed words on a page encourage us to speak and to speak up.  And it takes perseverance to write a book and to read one.  Mariann Edgar Budde wrote that perseverance is the hidden virtue of every courageous life.  Rarely do we see what it costs others to do what seems effortless to us. Books heal shame and give hope when we read of the perseverance of others. We find pathways and solutions and people like us.  We know that if another endured that, than we can endure this.

Through words we live more fully in the here and now even as we relive the past and enter the future. Books open another person’s heart and mind, and we peek inside.  In doing so, we see our own lives more clearly; we understand the impact of history, circumstances, and choices on people, on ourselves.  It makes us wiser and more forgiving.
 
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote:  I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests; the library was open, unending, free.  I was not much for school either, but give me the library any day.  And it is at the library that words are gathered, categorized and catalogued.  Words are there to serve us.  Someone left their words behind so that we might go forward smarter, more thoughtful and better prepared, changed by examination and re-examination.  We find words to grow into and words that expand our own web of knowledge.  There is meaning and purpose on the shelves. Our own lives are faced as we explore the lives of others and the knowledge they accumulated.

Books are good friends to me.  Each fits into my own story and speaks to me at a particular moment in my life, a particular stage of my own development.  Some friends were with me at the beginning, some as the plot thickened, and I know that some will accompany me for the entire ride.

Each of our lives is a storybook in progress.  Everything that we see, hear and experience is stored in memory, the bookshelf of the mind.  Hope and worry are make-believe stories we tell ourselves.  Grief and pride are what we feel when a chapter ends.  When we lose memory, individually or collectively, that is how we are erased.

Books and good writing comfort me in these difficult times. I marvel and give thanks that there continue to be so many gifted writers, so many wonderful books.  As Thomas Jefferson said, “I cannot live in a world without books,” and I thank the forefathers for our library system.  And I want to thank Dr. Seuss for teaching me to read with words and rhymes that tickled my mind and my imagination. And a thank you to Nancy Drew for making me a page turner and introducing me to chapter books and the pride of reading a “big” book, and for showing me that girls born in the 1950s could be smart and do interesting things, live adventurous lives.     

Reading a book is a private experience with public consequences.  It requires effort and introspection unlike the loudspeaker of social media contrived to fill us with outrage in order to sell advertising.  I have read that the ultimate freedom is to imagine and think for ourselves.  That is the foundation of democracy.  When we read, we are reminded of how much we have in common.  The Republic of Imagination is a country we can all believe in.

On the worst days the state of the country and the world seem hopeless, and then I read a wonderful book or hear the lyrics to a beautiful song, and I think: that came from inside someone’s mind, someone’s heart, and it gives me hope that hatred and careless people will not get the last word.  So, please, let's tell a new story.