The Paperless Age

Recently, I picked up an old book I haven't read in a while by one of my favorite authors, Richard Bach entitled "The Bridge Across Forever". The pages yellowed with age, and old bookmarks playing acrobatics in and out of the pages, I read through the pages as if reading them for the first time all over again. This in part because it has been so long since I actually read it, but I think that no matter how many times you read a book, you will always find something new, a message meant for just you, at exactly the right time.

"For the Love Of Story Time!"

That is the beauty of the written word, you can settle yourself in to your favorite nook or cranny, ball up next to a fire with your cup of hot cocoa, and not be disturbed as you slip into a completely different dimension, another world all its own with people, ideas and possibilities you never gave thought to before. So, you escape, shutting the noise and the chaos of this tired existence out for a while, enjoying your personal little trip through time and space.

With books, you can have complete creative license. You have your own idea what each character in the book looks like, sounds like, what it would be like to live where they live, and to exist in their world. When we listen to an audiobook, or go see the movie these things are taken away from us, and not nearly as detailed and engrossing. Although I enjoy listening to a good audiobook, and am a fan of a well-put-together cinematic masterpiece, I still get sad when I think of the decline in appreciation of the written word. These days we are so obsessed with 'going green', and saving paper, and speeding up the process of our every day lives, saving time... Hurry! Hurry, Rush, Rush RUSH!!! We lose appreciation for those quiet moments where we allow our minds to relax and we can quiet our inner being.

While I know that doomsday preachers, and governmental conspiracy theorists will say that it's already all gone down the drain, but it just takes one person to start a good trend. We should save some of these treasures, I think that the death of the Paperless age is only the beginning of worse things to come.

What's the hurry anyway? If you rush to the end and waste all the enjoyment of those wonderful moments spent savoring things that we love most, you're just racing towards "The End", and I for one am in no rush to get to that last page... Not just yet! ;-)