Undivided

“This is our duty to pursuit and to teach the truth wholly, clearly and bluntly.”

This is what my father written on my back as reminding me of my mission, and this should be the way of life of every human being. From the time of Enlightenment, human beings enlighten themselves, and rejected the religious way of thinking. They fight for meaning of their life through civilization. Truth that animals don’t know and human can only find through understanding knowledge. My father always proofs me how intellectual life should be and his passionate search for truth, he reads me continually until he finished every pages of me, and he rereads me again and again, this made me feel full of life, and everybody should enjoy this kind of bliss. Although I am 582 – pages thick, every pages had being explored by my father thoughtfully, I can see his eyes were delighted, and his mouth was dancing like waves when reading over me. And for me, as an entity of knowledge - my intellectual pursuit guides me to teach truth clearly and wholly with full confidence in knowledge’s power, and I hope I can inspire people as the way I did to my father. Until I’ve sent to this library by my father for the mission of inspiring the new generation with knowledge, I found out how banal the real world is, and how the new generation is far away from our world of knowledge.

On the first day I arrived to this University library, once I entered, the essence of the paper was missing, and all I could hear was the tapping sound of the computer keyboard. Following the footsteps of the librarian, on the first floor, the lobby is placed with computers in the centre, and shelves of books on two side; second floor with a big plasma television occupying the centre and side by side with computers and TVs, as well as electronic shelves of VCDs and DVDs, the books are missing; and when I come to the last floor, I understand why the books are not the focus on the first two floor, as the third floor is indeed the most important part of the library, which is full of books, with few computers to assist people to search for us. Once I had been settled down on shelves by the librarian with my code and label well pasted on my cover, I couldn’t wait to start my job immediately. Since this library is full of people all the time as I saw on the first and second floor, the computer seats for searching books are always being occupied and the circulation of DVDs and VCDs is very high, that the “librarian” is always being busy with checking in and out of the discs. How excited it is, that this library is in high usage! Interestingly, my colleagues laughed at me and claimed that people here are indifference of knowledge, and only taking knowledge as an instrument towards practical usage. But I am in faith of my mission, so, I wait, waiting for my first job and I wait, wait, wait…Finally, I had waited for nearly a month to meet my first customer – a teacher assistant.

This teacher assistant brought me back to his office, and his office reminds me of my father’s study room – full of books on shelves and on the table, and notes side by side. And he could not wait to read me once he was back to his office, he turned to my content page and screen in the topics, and immediately turned to my third chapter and started to read. He studied me precisely lines by lines, words by words, but could he really understand my ideas by starting with the third chapter? I wondered, but I still could find his eyes were sparkling like my father, and this vision made me warmth. And when he came to the last line of this chapter, he opened a machine with its mouth open and put me in, a slice of light sweep over me, and this repeated on my every pages of chapter three. The light was too strong and it wasn’t like the sparkles from the eyes, this light hurts. My body was like burning after the torture of the machine, and he putted me back to the shelves for me to rest. And on the next day, he returned me back to the library without linking the chapter three’s idea with the other chapters.

I felt so uncomfortable that the first time for somebody without finish reading me and left, but then I realized this is a nowadays practice. As my second customer act like the same and even more impersonal, so as to disregarded me until the night before the expired date of return. And my nightmare came on that night, a cold and rainy night. She was reading her book on computer which called “Facebook”, and with my content page opened. After she had update the content of her facebook, she started to read my content page, and flipping over my pages, and stopped on my conclusion part, she read, but without any sparkles in her eyes. The rain was so heavy outside, and her eyesight was as cold as iceberg, when she finished my conclusion part, her finger tips pressed on my body, and using another hand to flip up my conclusion pages, and intentionally tease my pages off! I tried my very hard to hold my body tight, so not to let her take away any pages, it was killing me, my strong will won, and I relief. But then, a sharp slashed over the edge of my pages, and my mind fell apart. It was raining outside, I was crying out loud. My tears and pain interweaved, my knowledge and mind was being divided. There is something missing from my mind, but I cannot remember what it is and who am I anymore.

I sit on my seat quietly, with my pain carried on and no one knows I am hurt. I am no longer a book, no longer an entity which teaches truth wholly. Even though there are other customers come to me, but no one read the “whole” of me, and so no one knows I am missing something. I had tried to review myself and try to picture the whole idea of my main argument, however, I cannot. There is no way for me to know the focus of my argument with my missing pages, and the sense of inanity continued to prey on my mind. How can that student understand my argument only with that few pages? Even for me, only losing a few pages, but already cannot capture the whole argument with the rest of the pages! And I become conscious of why I am on the third floor, not because this is the most important floor, but the most remote part of the library: students come to library for their books in the computers; the real books are only the supporting role here, the meaning of “library” had changed. Truth is being divided from its inner content, without intrinsic value; people here are banal and regarded things and mind can be fragmented without coherence!

Dear father, my mission had failed, I cannot pass on the knowledge that I process to the others, as I am no longer a complete book, and if I am, there will be no one willing to explore my world thoughtfully like you. Their indifference attitude towards knowledge intimately devalues the role of intellectual, as well as the intelligence of human being. But what can I do? All I can do is to sit here quietly, and wait; or maybe one day, I will be transformed to the words on screen, then being popular visit by so many readers like the facebook. And after all, libraries will have no books, and only electronic resources, the real technologic era will come.