I want to tell you a very, very true story.

Once upon a time, I was working in a cubicle at a job I really, really didn’t like.  It was the kind of job that induced tension headaches and stress-induced vomiting.  I tended to work through lunch, simply because, for that one shining hour, everyone left me alone.

So one day, during my lunch break, I am sitting in my cubicle, relishing the peace and quiet, when my heart stopped beating.

It didn’t last long–I estimate that from beginning to recovery, the entire episode lasted about 10 seconds.  And it wasn’t a serious medical episode–stress can make your body do a lot of strange things, including things called ectopic heartbeats.

But I will never be able to describe to you what it feels like not to hear your heart beating.

It’s a sound that we take for granted; one that is with us from the moment we’re born.  As a result, we don’t think about that reassuring, constant sound…until it stops.  Our heartbeat is a feeling throughout our body that we may notice when we’re in pain or overwhelmed, but we don’t value what that feeling really means until the sensation has stopped.  Because, for all that the heart is a concept–a thing that can soar, can be broken, can flutter, can sing–it’s also a hard-working, long suffering muscle that keeps every other piece of the body working and breathing and imagining and dancing.  And while it’s not beating, nothing else can happen.

I will never be able to describe to you how grateful I was to feel it begin beating regularly once again.  It’s a sound you don’t take for granted after that, believe me.

People say that libraries are the heart of their community.  That is a saying I treasure, because I know it means that libraries are the places that allow our imaginations, our creativity, and our basic everyday business to happen, just as Lady Pole mentioned in her post on Saturday.  But, like the heart, we are also an entity that many take for granted.  And honestly, that, too, is terrific, because if you imagine that the Library is always there, we are doing our jobs properly.

But that could stop.  Kelley’s post yesterday talked about the programs that the Library offers as a result of funding from National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS)–programs which are currently all slated for erasure.  There has been a lot of talk recently about losing PBS.  And that is scary, because a lot of us can remember a time before PBS.  We talk a lot about the loss of music and arts funding.  And that is scary because a lot of us already know what it is like to go to a school without music education, or without art classes, or without art supplies.  But we haven’t talked very much about how scary it will be to lose a library, because few of us, especially in this area of the country have had to face that reality before now.

So I would ask you today to face that reality.  Just for 10 seconds.   Think about what the Library, your Library, our Library, means to you.  What it provides, what it enables you to do.  Then think about what more your Library could do for you.  Think about a future with Libraries in them.

Then…let’s make that future happen.