I am one of millions to profess a love of books. When I was a child, my mother used to take me to the local library. My parents read to me constantly, and when I grew older, they continued to encourage my interest in reading, setting aside time after work to take me to bookshops. Some of the most peaceful memories I have are the memories of browsing shelves in Barnes and Noble with my father. We would sit side by side, him sipping coffee just as I drank hot chocolate, each with our respective books in hand.

These events imbued me with a love of reading. And it is through my journey of reading through the years that has led me to fully realize the great importance of books themselves.

There are many reasons why books themselves are important, but there is one central reason that is explained more eloquently in Susan Orlean’s literary masterpiece The Library Book.

The idea of being forgotten is terrifying. I fear not just that I, personally, will be forgotten, but that we are all doomed to being forgotten— that the sum of life is ultimately nothing: that we experience joy and disappointment and aches and delights and loss, make our little mark on the world, and then we vanish, and the mark is erased, and it is as if we never existed. If you gaze into that bleakness even for a moment, the sum of life becomes null and void, because if nothing lasts, nothing matters. It means that everything we experience unfolds without a pattern, and life is just a wild, random, baffling occurrence, a scattering of notes with no melody. But if something you learn or observe or imagine can be set down and saved, and if you can see your life reflected in previous lives, and can imagine it reflected in subsequent ones, you can begin to discover order and harmony. You know that you are a part of a larger story that has shape and purpose— a tangible, familiar past and a constantly refreshed future. We are all whispering in a tin can on a string, but we are heard, so we whisper the message into the next tin can and the next string. Writing a book, just like building a library, is an act of sheer defiance. It is a declaration that you believe in the persistence of memory.

The Library Book, 93

When I read this passage the first time, it took my breath away. I was genuinely stunned, amazed that what I had felt for years had been put into words. The root of my love for books had been rendered so beautifully in ink, and there was nothing I could do but memorize the page number, re-read, and then read this aloud to both parents individually because this was quite possibly the most enthralling thing I had read all year.

This passage is the logical and more optimistic opposite of the mentality present in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Hamlet is at the graveyard contemplating man’s mortality. Referring to Alexander the Great, Hamlet laments:

Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beer barrel?

5.1.216-219

Similar musings occupy Hamlet’s thoughts, but his assertion remains clear; after death, everything is rendered meaningless. It does not matter what one’s accomplishments in life were, whether they were Alexander the Great or otherwise, everything you have done in life will become null at the moment of death.

Other than a morbid philosophy of humanity, Hamlet offers the questions: Do we matter after death? Do our lives matter? Are we really just actors on a stage, as Shakespeare professed?

Is there a way to avoid that fate?

Orlean says yes. By writing a book, you are preserving the essence of a time. You are creating something that will exist after you have passed, and through the act of creation, you are forming a legacy forged with ink and paper.

Moreover, a book is never simply a book: within its pages contains pieces of its writer’s soul. There are parts of a person in a book, little slivers scattered through a character’s personality, actions, and mindset. Books are our mirrors. A book is a reflection of life itself.

The act of reading allows that essence to live on long after it has been written, creating a connection that can, if nurtured correctly, reach through centuries. A soul belonging to decades past can touch the heart of a modern reader. With words as their vehicle, anything can be communicated.

At its blandest, a book is simply a bundle of paper with words. At its brightest, it is a vivid testimonial to the meaning of our lives. Books are, at its core, a way to connect people through space and time. Books, just like people, are beautiful.

So the next time you pick up a book and flick through the pages, remember all that you hold: you are holding up the thoughts of an age, you are holding slivers of a person’s essence, you are holding up a weapon against the destructive nature of time.

You are holding a book.