<< Knowledge must go around

There’s this train station on the way home that has a very peculiar sign above this little metallic shelf: 

Dear traveler: These books you can take with you on your trip, you can deliver them at your local library, or bring them back here. The library wishes you a very good journey

Libraries in Norway are part of a centralized system in which all the localities respond and can get resources from all others. This initiative however I found particularly charming. Not only because the longest trip from that particular station lasts around 4 hours, but because of the gesture and care embedded into it.

Not only does it suppose and require collective collaboration for these books to safely reach their destiny, but because everyone around seems to appreciate their existence in this particular place. 

It should be a basic tenet of society to at least make access to knowledge easier, just in the same way we look after their physical health. It's things like these that keep societies functioning in invisible ways and make lasting impacts.

A long time ago a colleague was on the way back from a long day at work at the university. He had promised to lend me a book during the course of a lecture. I got to him as he came to the car and said “let me know when I can drop by to borrow your book”

He stopped what he was doing and said “let's go back”. Walked to his office, went straight for the bookshelf and handed back the book saying “knowledge must go around”.

It is in this spirit that we can enrich others, by providing tools to improve their quality of life and expanding their perspective. This thought has accompanied me now for some years, and it is valid then as it is now. 

Fighting the enemies of humanity: ignorance and poverty in all its shapes require this much.

return 0;