Likely Passage

Jump to Comments

Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting this in a class blog, but I have always been a distracted student. Of course, here, a new father, near 40, in a grad program my priorities and focus are different than my undergrad years. And I’m certainly much more invested in my education now than during the bog-standard small town public education I received in the 90s and early aughts. But I’m not sure I’ve ever fully left behind the seven-year-old me who was kept out of the advanced course for being “too spacey”. Whenever I have to learn something, no matter how interesting it might’ve been ten minutes ago, my mind starts to wander a little bit. There’s always something else I want to know more. Some other angle of approach.

This is hardly a unique trait and I’m sure I could get a clinical term tagged to this kind of distractedness if it ever drifts a little closer towards extreme. I’ve never considered it a problem though because it’s lead to a life of endless curiosity and a desire to keep pushing against my own intellectual boundaries. It’s why I find myself always critiquing, critiquing, critiquing. Maybe an occasionally annoying habit but one that always pushes me to ask “is this right? is there another way to think about this?” and “what’s being left unsaid? what’s being left out of this perspective?” It’s a poking and prodding learning style. One that doesn’t always have a clear goal or purpose, beyond seeing where an idea might lead. And one I hope I have the energy to keep up until the day I die.

Participating in the kind of work that will allow others to nurture and engage with this same kind of curiosity and distractedness is what lead me to library science. Infinite learning, as far as I am concerned, is what life is all about. We are here to witness and absorb. To engage with the culture and society that surrounds. Life is more fun, more colorful, and, most importantly, more interesting when you encounter new things, new ideas.

I love to rail against “useless efficiency” because it strips away all the fun and pleasure of living. We should never have to worry about the bottom line of time and money. We should never have to stress over how useful an education is. The hustle mindset has seemingly infiltrated every industry and hobby. Education for education’s sake and the humanities in general are increasingly being sidelined as distractions from the real work of efficiently making money.

This has significantly diminished the quality of our collective conversations and placed limits on what we, collectively, believe is possible. Politically, we’ve seen how it’s reduced our ability to progress. It’s created a radical environment, allowing authoritarianism and fascism to gain a stronger and stronger foothold. Promoting and supporting the value of lifelong learning won’t solve this issue on its own, obviously, but it will create the context in which we might begin to believe other realities are possible.

I’ve also been thinking about this topic in my daily work at the Braille Institute Library. This is something I am expanding on in more detail in my inspiration report, so I won’t dwell too much on it here, but most of our patrons are elderly and losing their sense of independence. And at least once a day, I hear how much our patrons value our services. The books they get through us are, in their own words, “a lifeline.”  Books! The most basic library service is still fully capable of restoring happiness and a sense of purpose to people who have lost not only their ability to read but also their general sense of independence and, I hope it’s not too presumptuous to assume, a sense that life, even near the end, still has surprises to offer. That there are new things to learn and new experiences to be had. Expanding on this and creating library services that inspire this same feeling of renewal and possibility in every member of the community, no matter their age, background, and history, is what the work is all about.