I’d like us all to take a moment to think about books, and imagine a library full of them. There are shelves upon shelves of books, not a single one with the exact same history, or story. They have different bindings, covers, printed on varying kinds of paper. There are ancient tomes that require the utmost care when browsing them; other books are new, and still smell like fresh paper and ink; yet some books are study enough to survive the clumsy hands of young children; there are books whose pages are dog-eared and smoothed from hundreds of hands and eyes pouring over them. They cover an endless variety of topics, and everyone has their favorite or least favorite genres. And one of the most beautiful things about books is that they are equally important when it comes to building a library. The world almanac is just as important to a complete collection as the Dr. Seuss corner, and the Stephen King shelf completes the horror section just as much as the Lord of the Rings trilogy completes the rows of fantasy.
The world is like a library, a huge, sprawling archive of every word ever written, and we are the books that line its endless shelves. Everyone has their own personal differences, and no two people can ever be exactly alike, just the same way all books are different. We form our own groups of people we get along with, just like how books can be sorted into genres. Every person has their own importance in making up the whole of our world, just as every book is needed to complete the ultimate library. And most obviously, every book, every person, has people who care for them, and people who don’t.
As someone who might as well have been raised by the written page, I personally find beauty in every book I encounter. Even if I may dislike the story it contains, I am still entranced by the book itself. Someone, somewhere, at some time, poured over the original pages this book was written on, and slaved over its construction. They felt the need, for whatever reason, to pour their time into the slow, arduous task of breathing life into what was simply, paper and ink, and creating the masterpiece known to most as simply, just another book. To me, no book can ever be “just another book” because every book is purely unique. I see the worth in all of them, even if I may not like them.
For books, if you dislike what you see, you can simply close it, reshelf it, and walk on. But for some odd reason or another, we cannot seem to do this with people. We feel the need to judge, and sometimes, to spread our opinions. With books, you do not want to waste time and energy ripping out every page you don’t like, burning every book you don’t wish to read. So why is it that when you find a person who you obviously disagree with, there is a desire to retaliate, to do something about your differences? If books and people are so similar, why can we not treat them similarly? And beyond this, why can’t we see the second side of the story, and recognize, that she’s just as human as you are, and he has every single right to an opinion that you do.
Normally, I am a closed person. I don’t let people know what I’m thinking. For today, I will stop being a closed book, and I will spill my words out for all to see. For a majority of my life, I have stood on the outside, looking in at everyone else’s lives. But for now, I’d like to reverse this, and show my story to you all. I’ve had the luck to see a broader scope of the Earth than most people my age. I was born to a single mom juggling college, work, and raising me. She and my father were never married; I grew up spending weekends with my dad, and weekdays with my mom and Dave, who she is now happily married to. I currently live a very comfortable life, and the short period that my mother and I lived off government funding, I never felt or even knew what poor was. I do my best to not take my life for granted, because it’s hard to be discontent with not having an iPhone when you’ve actually met and spoken to those starving kids in Africa. I have ADD and depression, and even though I suck at school, the reason I don’t share my standardized testing scores is because it feels like bragging. You might not have known any of this about me, but I would like to remind you that I am still the same clumsy and weird Lauren that most of you already know. Nothing has changed about me, only what you know about me. After laying out my story for you all to see, I may seem more human to you now, less of “just another book”, but the reality is I was always unique. My book may have only opened today, but it has always been filled with its own personal string of words, and so has everyone else’s.
You know, they say don’t judge a book by its cover, and I have to agree. But even better than that would be to see a book, and not judge it at all. We’re all human, we’re all people, we’re all sentient, and most importantly, despite our differences, we’re all equal. So why judge when you can just accept and move on? If you cannot learn something from every book you encounter, then simply let the next person pick them up to read the words that someone took the time to print inside.