That’s a pretty drastic statement, right? Burn the books. Well, it’s not shades of Fahrenheit 451, the dystopian novel and film about the slow substitution of reading literature for the sound bites and factoids of television. In the world created by acclaimed science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, and reimagined by director Francois Truffaut, reading was banned and firemen burned houses that contained books. So I don’t really mean to burn the books, exactly, but I do mean get rid of them.
Let’s take a few steps back.
I love to read. I’ve loved books ever since I began to read at age 4. My mother believed in books, reveled in them, honored the written word. One of my clearest memories is of her seated in her well-cushioned chair by the window, reading. For her books were a doorway into the world of imagination, adventure and a treasure trove of knowledge, and a doorway out of the after effects of being poor, African and female in a tiny village in a small South American country just two generations from slavery and still steeped in colonialism. If it were not for her own brilliance, and the collective will of her family who recognized that brilliance and pushed for every opportunity for her, she would not have received a scholarship to high school and college, become a teacher, migrated to America, helped to start a school, and passed on that love of reading to me and many others to use as a doorway of our own.
That is exactly what books became for me – the ships of dreams, constant companions, places of rest, sources of reference and holders of wisdom, available for the mere price of reading. Over the years, whenever I have moved, my books – crates of them – have moved with me. I can mark the major eras of my life and development by the dates in the books I own. People who see my books can know my character. They are the touchstones in my life. They remind me of who I am.
But do they, really? As I move through the fifth decade of my life, I have been filled with questions. My place in society is shifting; I am of the generation of workers that must make way for those younger. The companies or careers in which we worked for most of our lives are evolving beyond their need for us. The children we have raised, and in which we invested a great deal of our sense of purpose, are raising children of their own. As I question my role in the world, my very purpose, I have found myself turning to my books for the answers.
It was as if I thought I could re-create the fire of creativity and inventiveness I had in my 20s and 30s that was fueled by the books I had read. But when I went back, and looked at my work from those years, it seemed now trite and pedestrian, not fresh, ground-breaking or exciting as it was then. I have grown and changed. I discovered that whoever I am now, or am to be, cannot be found looking back. Everything in those books is already part of me, ingrained in the fabric of my soul. The way forward is to stand on that ground of being and open myself to the new. With all that I have lived and learned, in this endlessly expansive and creative universe, what new thoughts, new insights are available to me now that I can build on to create an original expression?
This can only be achieved if I consciously let go of the past, and trust in the validity of my own voice in the present, not who I was, or who I thought I was, or who I wanted to appear to be.
Is it scary? Oh yes. Radical? Absolutely! But it is through the tumultuous upheaval that is tilling the soil that seedlings take root and grow.
And so I say burn your books, throw them out, give them away. Don’t let your personal library be a substitute for living in the present. Lighten the mental load of clinging to the glory days of old. Take the risk to free your mind from the past and stand ready to discover who you are now.
