It doesn’t matter where I am. I find libraries in cities and small towns and even if I don’t enter them, I love knowing they are there, waiting.

They are shelter in the heat (or the cold when I’m not in Southeast Asia, but Canada’s winters) and labyrinthine spaces for discovery.

I take comfort in their cluttered, musty promise of fulfillment. I have lingered over books in languages I’ll probably never understand (literal and metaphorical), and kicked off my shoes to sit in armchairs with beloved authors, and dream.

Murakami’s idea that we have libraries in our minds appeals to me on every level. The books living in our heads are not only thoughts and ideas running in some kind of sacred chronology. They are feelings, emotions, the results of actions and reactions.

They are not fixed. They are not trying to terrorize us with what they hold and that we cannot access. They are asking for us to nurture them, know them, play with them, and align them so that they shine and that we shine when we are with them.

And, as Murakami says, we need to make new reference cards. Because our thoughts are always a part of us, and we never have to end the process of becoming who we are.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editor: Jenna Penielle Lyons

Photo: Courtesy of the author