I am sitting in a fine little library in a small Southern town. Uncluttered open space. The unrelenting order of books lined up on book shelves. All at attention. Spines out. Neatly labeled. Looks like the Dewey decimal system from here but I could be wrong.

Big windows look out on local greenery and shrubbery. It is a big room, brightly lit both by sunlight and thoughtfully placed interior ceiling lights.

And it is quiet. So quiet.

So many of us struggle with externally imposed stress and relentless demands to perform and produce in this “modern era.” A library is a place where there are no demands upon you except to keep to yourself, keep your voice down and your clothes on. Generally agreed upon adult behavior.

Looking around a library imparts a clear sense of how much you don’t know and how much you have yet to learn. There are clear limits on what is possible for one human being to learn in one lifetime. I finally and reluctantly accepted that.

I had a crisis of faith midway through graduate school. Granted I was still very young. But I realized nothing I researched and wrote about in a thesis would add more than an iota of knowledge to all of the accumulated knowledge already available in the world. An atom’s worth at most.

Pretty piddly payoff.

The secret to studying something successfully for a long period of time is passion. You need to be pretty sure that the learning path you embark upon is going to to be just as fascinating to you years from now as it is now. And how would you know that? Well, there’s the rub. You likely won’t.

So much of life is coming upon something, sizing it up based on what we presently know and need, deciding whether or not that opportunity/experience/job/lover will fulfill our current needs and moving forward or back having considered all those things.

I’ve learned that passion sustains itself if it engages your heart and soul and not just your head. If you end up making a decision in any important areas – opportunity/experience/job/lover – using your head over your heart, the outcome isn’t likely to be all that gratifying or sustainable.

I should know. I used to make that mistake consistently. A job was likely to be a lot of fun? Oh no. Couldn’t take that job as it would be too frivolous. A job that would stretch my intellectual limits but had uncertain long-term prospects? Oh heavens no. I needed a steady, nine-to-five job with a predictable work schedule and future.

To my point and chagrin looking back, I remember a conversation with Carol Off, longtime host of the CBC Radio program As It Happens. She talked about a short-term contract she was offered and how she was looking forward to it and all that (her first season on-air with the national daily current affairs program).

I told her I would never be comfortable working like that and needed to find a “real job.” What a putz I was. I never ended up finding that “secure” job. To start, it turned out I hated the “predictability” of a nine-to-five job. I had more entrepreneurial spirit than I would own up to. I was looking for guidance from others and a “sure thing” for far too long into adulthood.

And as it turned out, I got a loathsome 9 – 5 government job. Carol Off went on to become a much respected, award winning multi-year national CBC radio host who kept working from contract to contract. So much for “real jobs.”

Happily, career angst was low on the list of neuroses I had to deal with. In the end, I worked. I made enough money to keep body and soul together. It “worked out.”

And all that I lived up until now led me to this beautiful little library where I am sitting today. In my working days, the library’s unflappable atmosphere of calm and order might well have driven me round the bend. Nowhere near exciting enough. Today I experience it as a tonic for the senses and the nerves.

Libraries never were designed to be social hotspots. They are designed for people who are comfortable with their own thoughts and self-directed intellectual pursuits. And little kids. Libraries are great for little kids with the right programs and activities and boundless learning opportunities.

Things I once mocked for what they weren’t and didn’t offer have now come full circle in my head. Libraries are oases of sanity and peace if you are inclined to appreciate that. Life is inherently risky and unstable. But if you have the courage to believe and follow your own instincts, you may end up where you wanted to be anyway.

Carol Off might agree with me if I met up with her now. The hell with security. Take the contract and run. You might just get a chance to learn what you are really capable of. Hindsight it is said, is always 20/20.