The Library of Life

(ARTICLE)

?One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
?Which road do I take?? she asked. ?Where do you want to go??
?I don?t know?, Alice answered. ?Then, said the cat, it doesn?t matter.??
?But I don?t want to go among mad people,? said Alice.
?Oh, you can?t help that,? said the cat. ?We?re all mad here.?? (Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)

Have you ever felt you are not totally attuned to the idiosyncrasies of a restricted local hip-hop club or that you would amplify with quandary the tedious strings of a cello during its dire attempts to awaken you during a 2-hour concerto for piano, violin, cello, and orchestra?

Life?s shoes ?are made for walking, and that?s just what they?ll do?, asserts a song, yet not every shoe fits every foot. And haven?t we experienced at least once in our own lives the saying ?Be careful what you wish, for it might just come true?? We should indeed pay attention to the path we choose, for it may just happen to guide us from beneath our feet.

I envisage life experiences as countless strings of happenings gathered in stories, saved at their turn in a huge library, in which we all enthusiastically walk and would need to find our way out, eventually. A library where no one has read everything nor has written down enough records to grasp the epilogue of the sometimes abstruse plots held in our palms. Where the ratio between the intelligence to choose the right book titles to explore and the acumen to grasp their parsed meaning is thin enough to make the difference between a ?failure? or an ?accomplished life?.

Life books don?t just pop out from bookshelves into our hands; instead we approach them with our own ?aura? and choose in either open, resolute faith or blind curiosity the lines of their contents to live and with whom to entrust our emotions, from one anonymous spacious lecture hall to another cosy reading corner.

While distracted by shimmering illustrations encapsulating our reveries, we are sometimes in a hurry to skim through the books? wording to the sequel of their meaning, undressing tenets with our ethos-driven apparel of feelings in order to brandish victory before we even get to the climax chapters predicting dichotomic consequences, ensued in individual destinies. The plots ensconce the books? kernel in a variety of shapes from hard drama to light comedy beyond the ?action layer? feeling we have, which keeps us alert or content throughout our active read, while we search for the next pre-written black pages to fill with the colours of our living.

The best companion to wish for, in this Quijotian adventure in Bookland, is not so much a cup of coffee or a pair of slippers, but wisdom ? something with which we would always want to be endowed as we garner experiences throughout the maze of our lives. Yet sometimes, the notion itself appears unfathomable enough in the present we try to fashion for our own trend. Which makes us wander to the ?reading sign? of a debated life practice versus theoric perspective. A stage where we need to stop and reconsider the entire book spine in our hands: destiny.

I hail from an adolescent library section, where theory was made of sunny clearances and protected dreams through an inherent syntax of grammar rules and terminological consistency. Yet, the style is amenable to change in practice once the contents are rendered in the individual life with captions of personal feelings. ?How many electricians are needed to change a light bulb? It depends on the context? goes the translators? joke, without questioning their professionalism. There is no arguing with such an extended truth, for every general story prerequisite would become a personal life script in our hands, directed from a subjective perspective.

Among the many human typologies, there are the greater two: the fatalist with the random selection of books of experiences to live and the indeterminist with the conscientious choice of such.
No need to dwell on the meanings of the two, as they are both triggered by our character and conduct towards the unforeseen outcome to be risked or avoided in the syntax of our life. Better said by the patience and the will we apply to read the books till the end and opt for our own chapter(s) and character(s), under the simple ?likes?-?dislikes?, ?follow?- ?un-follow? social marks.

In the light of these lines, we should wonder if life is really ?as it is? or is it rather ?what we make of it?, when we apply its writings upon our nurtured wishes and needs, touching it with our senses so that life itself would leave in return its imprint upon our destinies.

The library?s labyrinth is unknown, but the fork we choose always remains our original option, with or without any disturbing Cheshire cat along the way. And regardless of the bookshelves, of their colours or heights, we can?t help but fall in love with the read of the world?s library, where we can surely get lost in order to find ourselves anew ? in the wonderland of life!

(The Library of Life, Soar. Occasion: World Book Day, 01.03.2012, ? www.soaring-words.com. Picture credits: ?Alice in Wonderland?, http://disneymoviesonline.go.com).

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