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Once upon a time, I was thinking about going back to graduate school for a degree in library science. Like teachers and doctors, the world always has a need for a librarian. It seemed like a stable job, and I’ve realized over the years that––for me––job stability is connected to job satisfaction. My favourite jobs: the ones that had no end-point and could potentially continue forever. My least favourite jobs: the ones that were always in-flux with layoffs and sweeping changes.

Even if you come through the layoffs, you don’t feel comfortable on the other side. You’re just uncomfortable with a job vs. uncomfortable without a job. Believe me, I’d rather have a job than no job, but I’d also rather be comfortable and in a quiet job than feeling unstable but in an exciting job.

But I spoke recently with a librarian, and she told me all about how often librarians lose their jobs due to budget cuts. So much for that.

I recently came across this interesting post that’s a few years old. The author talks about designing your ideal education plan if money and time weren’t an issue. He writes about how his education plan wouldn’t be based in the classroom, per se, but as I thought it through, I decided that mine would. I would love to be back in a classroom, learning something new.

I would love to get a degree in library sciences. I’d love to study at Oxford and would spend the rest of my life starting sentences with, “When I was at Oxford…” Then I would switch universities and go somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else, jumping from university to university across the world.

I would take an enormous crate of books with me and spend a year in the Maldives, reading on the water. I would travel, of course, and learn a Scandinavian language properly by speaking it in the everyday world rather than in a classroom. I would apprentice with a mechanic and learn how to fix a car. And then I would apprentice with a zoologist and learn how to care for various animals.

And then when I got back to the normal world, I would settle down in a small town near water that needs a librarian and can promise funding the position for at least the next fifty years. And that’s where you would find me with my wealth of knowledge.

What would you study during your ten-year education plan and what career would you take afterward?

It’s time for yet another deep thought brought to you from a passage in Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. I’ll start by saying that I love new books. If a book has been published recently, I justify the cost of a clean, new copy by knowing that my purchase helped the author’s sales rank so I actually just gave myself the gift of possible future books because it will help them get another book deal.

But if it’s an older book and sales figures aren’t going to affect future book deals, I save money (and trees) and buy used. We have great second-hand book options around me, and I go several times per week. Can’t get the amazing finds if you don’t hang out in the store and grab them as they come in.

But I’ve never thought about the book donors––the regular people who provide the books I’m buying at the second-hand shop.

Bythell writes about how interesting it is to hold a book that you know belonged or was touched by someone of historical significance. He says on page 275:

Researchers discovered this year that our brains have an automatic reaction to believe that death happens to other people. We can consciously override that state––clearly, that is exactly what I’m doing now by considering my own demise by writing about this––but our natural tendency is to shield ourselves from really believing it.

The Guardian reported on the study, and one of the researchers explained: “We have this primal mechanism that means when the brain gets information that links self to death, something tells us it’s not reliable, so we shouldn’t believe it.”

The senior writer for the study took it a step further: “We shield ourselves from existential threats, or consciously thinking about the idea that we are going to die, by shutting down predictions about the self, or categorising the information as being about other people rather than ourselves.”

We’ve done ourselves a disservice as a society by tucking death into dark corners. We talk about that a lot when it comes to miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal death, but it applies to all death. We don’t really talk about death or encourage people to learn about death. Except, of course, in death cafes.

Is this macabre? Maybe a little. But I thought that it was fascinating that we can rationally believe something is true and talk ourselves out of it at the very same time.

Carolyn Hax (I know I talk about her advice like preteens talk about pop bands) said the most profound, simple, applicable-to-everything thing this week: “Trust that humans go through this and humans get through this.”

She was writing about a divorce, giving advice to help the person through it. And that’s part of her advice among other thoughts such as taking things minute by minute rather than trying to think about the future or asking yourself what will help you heal.

But there was something so comforting in those words above because nothing is new. There is no one going through anything that another person hasn’t gone through before. Sure, small details may change. Someone had to be the first person who was publicly shamed on the Internet, but infamy is infamy and other people experienced it––widespread albeit offline––before that first person.

Which means there is always someone out there who has been through the pain you’re going though and may be able to help you navigate it simply by walking beside you. Does their presence negate your pain? Of course not. But it is easier to find your way through that pain when you know that you have someone to pause with you when you find yourself getting lost in your grief. Even better when you find a whole group of people who understand.

It’s not saying that your experience will be the same as someone else’s. Your end point out of that grief may look very different from someone else’s end point out of their grief from the same situation. It happens all the time in our community. But the point is that there is a through. That grief may never disappear, but it changes.

Passing along her words in case they give you comfort, too.

Think about it this way. Look back at yourself ten years ago. I was 35. My job was different. The twins were only in school two hours per day. I hadn’t yet learned anything about computer programming (and didn’t believe I ever would). 35-year-old Melissa had no clue about the day-to-day life of 45-year-old Melissa. Isn’t that a bizarre thought?

My future self is a stranger.

I can look at the past and know how I reached this point. Imagine what each Melissa thought and felt along the way. But that future Melissa — tomorrow’s Melissa or next week’s Melissa or next year’s Melissa — are all a mystery.

Getting into birding feels natural right now. It would have been bizarre even five years ago. When asked about becoming a birder, 40-year-old Melissa would have the responded, “I hope not!” And yet, I found myself happily looking at birds a weekend or two ago, chatting about binoculars with a park ranger.

45-year-old Melissa cannot imagine what 50-year-old Melissa will be like. Will she be doing the same work? Have the same interests? The same friends?

Will she read this post five years from now and roll her eyes?

What do you think your future self will be like?