I write this from Newberry Library and I must confess feeling some amount of guilt. In order to make use of this library or the various resources available in any library, I will have to relearn a skill now lost to me; that is, research. Am I as savvy as I think I am? Likely not. If my world view is in part constructed from the countless hours spent on social media websites or the various searches I've made and only looked at the first few results, then my worldview may be less developed than it could be. Much of the wealth of human knowledge and experience still has a primarily physical presence; that wealth must be sought after with a higher level of discipline and perseverence.

Why I feel guilty is I don't quite have anything to research. Sure, such a task is by no means strictly necessary; I have plenty of hobbies and interests and life obligations to fill my time. That isn't the problem. Spending any amount of time in a library, however, and especially a library of this caliber, quickly exposes the certain lack of quality and rigor of my past Youtube and Wikipedia "deep dives". In order to truly know something, to be an expert as such, requires not only time dedicated but quality time dedicated. This I already knew but here, in this moment, the reminder isn't subtle.

What an opportunity to put this brain to good use, if I can seize it. That doesn't have to be explicitly within these walls, but to heed the call from anywhere, at anytime, to best use the conduits of my mind, to inquisitively seek the greatest minds of before and take in what they've had to say, to wriggle through the facts superficial that a person only ever believes he/she understands so to find the true treasure: the innumerable moments of eureka, of love's labour's lost, which although we don't recognize it, illuminate the sky of today.