I don't exactly suppose this picture is school library related... directly. Yes and no. It was created by a self-proclaimed "book eater" named Barca. It's a wonderful picture. The obvious concept is that reading makes people grow... makes them reach higher. That's not why I picked this picture though.
What I'm about to say will be really unpopular with this class. People go into Library Science stuff because they love reading. I know. I have sucked life out of many, many books in my day, and in my self-made monastery of academia find myself shelved with the greats. Dusty books line my walls and litter my nightstand. I read because I breathe. But all that should be no shock to this crowd. These are all book eaters here.
As I looked at the picture, I came to see a couple things that disturbed me. First, that paper podium only holds one. Reading isolates. Heads get so full of the dust of time and people and ground-up fairies that the senses get clogged. To read is to know solitude. I mean that in both positive and negative aspects of the word. It is a high and lonely plane, and the more books, the higher the tower grows.
Also, the words stood upon are the words of others. I remembered the day when I realized everything I wrote had roots elsewhere. Then I realized most everything I thought had roots elsewhere. Perhaps that's true of everyone, and better Socrates than soda commercials. But when you stand upon the great ones, it's easy to lose where you begin. A shaky stand of philosophy, literature, art, history, drama, passion and pain, and you do tend to lose yourself. But I still don't know if the individual soul is diminished or expanded by climbing the pillars of others' wisdom.
Personally, I think the most important part of reading is taking in the words of others and then either agreeing and making them your own or disagreeing and putting them aside... I think by standing and taking in the words of others they become our own. Yes, much of what I know and think and write is rooted in others but not everything because I have personal experience and while someone may write something that I agree with it may not be just because I read it but because I have experienced it. That's why reading is important but living is so much more so.
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