The Library as a Gymnasium for the Soul
I was re-reading one of my favourite books (longtime visitors to this site will remember me oft quoting from it), titled What’s the Story, by Anne Bogart, and what stood out for me this time was the passage where she’s talking to a marketing person about how to get the word out about her theatre company. She at first talks about the sort of nuts and bolts of the company. Try again, says the marketing person, that’s dull. Eventually she says, “We offer a gym for the soul.” And that becomes workable. As you probably know I think about the library and libraries a lot, though it’s been a while since I wrote anything here about them. (I guess I’ve been too busy working in one :) ).
But I’ve been thinking, too, about libraries as gymnasiums for the soul. I’ll preface this by simply saying that the last two and half or so years working in the library has been hard, like really freaking hard. But it’s been hard and difficult and tricky because it’s an AMAZING place. The things we’ve done to help people, providing books and DVDs and help filling out forms and connecting them to services, and honestly I could go on for a few pages here, is actually staggering. In short, I’m carrying so many stories right now. Because yes, everything that’s going on in the world — people want to talk about how it’s affected them, stuff that’s happened to them, or just the daily lovely stuff that they want to share. Library workers are not at all counsellors, but we listen. The stories have been sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes astonishing, lovely, strange. You know, it’s all been a lot for people.
What I’ve found uplifting is that libraries persist. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, we were doing library take-out. The phrase I’ve heard so often these last years is, “you’re a lifesaver.” Or, “I don’t know what I would have done without the library.” Or, “it’s such a comfort that the library is here.” When this all started, I had so many conversations with people on the phone when we were doing library take-out, or later in person, with folks who said they were isolated and lonely and that we were the only ones with whom they’d had a conversation.
The library is a lot of things but I’ve been thinking about it lately as a gymnasium for the soul…..because it’s a place in which you can ask good, nourishing, complicated, simple, heartfelt, deep, innocent, weird, lovely questions, and if you’ve read my novel, Everything Affects Everyone, you know how I feel about questions. The questions I’m asking, anyway, from within that space are:
What does optimism look like now? What radical good can we do with the power of our imaginations? What can we do to foster that important feeling of belonging? How can we hold / create spaces for complexity and also delight? How will we, going forward, be collectively human? How can we help others not squander their gifts? How can we uplift and challenge and encourage and support each other? How do we want to contribute and live and be and be ALIVE now?
Libraries encourage those who use them to dream, to wonder, to imagine. They are places of comfort and solace and good company. People have brought their griefs and bewilderments to the library because, I have heard, it’s a place that makes them feel okay. And that is something that we all deserve — to feel okay. (Shouldn’t that just be the basic minimum?)
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.”
— Goethe
One ought, as Goethe says, but not everyone has easy access to songs, poems, art. The library, though, offers these things. Anne Bogart says, “The human impulse to tell one’s own story is one of the basic human rights and freedoms in democratic societies.” She also says, “Speaking a story can be an act of letting in light.”
I think about this every day. I think about it because I see it in action. What a powerful, empowering, thrilling moment it is when someone entrusts you with even a sliver of their story, in a building, yet, that is full of stories. How transformational.
— BTW: Easiest way to support your local public library? Get a library card!