Look Up

I have a t-shirt that I bought somewhere within the last 20 years that says Eat, Sleep, Read. As these are three of my favorite activities, of course I bought it.

The first two are obvious physical needs, but what about the third? For me, the reminder to Read is like a reminder to Breathe.

I was known as a bookworm as a kid by my family and peers. I wore (and wear) that name proudly. I read to escape a less-than-ideal family and school life, but escapism soon developed into a way to understand a world beyond my comprehension and beyond myself. No surprise I ended up as a librarian—a life surrounded by books seemed (and still seems) to me a pretty good way to make a living and be in the world.

A library is a conversation—I want all students to join the conversation, to find themselves in dialogue with the multiplicity of voices on the shelves, both physical and virtual. The horrors of the world are not new, even if you are experiencing them for the first time. History is full of people who faced what felt unsurvivable—and who found, in books, both the evidence that others had survived and the ideas that helped them push back. We collect and preserve those voices precisely because they matter most when the present feels most threatening.

Libraries are built on hope. We collect, preserve, and promote information from the past and present in service to the future. What’s more hopeful than that? We are guided by the belief that our work helps others turn information into knowledge—and that time, experience, and reflection can transform knowledge into wisdom. In an environment that benefits from confusion and isolation, that chain—information, knowledge, wisdom—is not passive. It is resistance.

And while you’re reading, don’t forget to look up and say hello. This simple acknowledgment of others around you is also an act of hope, and the first building block of community.

Because community is where private conviction becomes collective action. It’s easy to dismiss that word as vague or overused—and it can be both. But what I mean by it is specific: the moment you recognize someone else, and they recognize you, you are no longer navigating this alone. That recognition is not just comfort. It is the precondition for organizing, for showing up, for doing anything together that you could not do apart.

It starts with looking up. Look up from your phone, your thoughts, your book. Greet one another. Put the headphones on mute. Say good morning to the stranger you pass on campus or on the sidewalk. That small acknowledgment may anchor someone—and in anchoring them, anchor yourself—to something larger than your own worry.

Read to understand the world clearly. Look up to find the people you’ll change it with.

So I still urge everyone to Eat, Sleep, and Read. But also: Look Up. Say Hello. And then—once you know what you know, and you know who’s beside you—act.

It might be time to update the t-shirt.

Andrew W. White is the Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian and can be reached at awhite02@wesleyan.edu.