Books as our friends

Books – an incredible art style that has been around since the creation of society itself. Starting from the simple cuneiform and colorful pictograms found on clay tablets and walls of ancient buildings, mysterious scrolls, scraps of pages contained in simple bindings and slowly evolving to wonderful masterpieces both in appearance and in the beautiful content they hide within themselves. Books have allowed humanity to pass down the knowledge and wisdom accumulated during all of history and has even withstood the test of time by continuing to reside in our homes despite the more contemporary and convenient means of education and information that exist today.

Yes, the internet and the computer could provide easier access and a nearly infinite amount of data, but there is nothing like running your hand through the wrinkled spine of a book that has told its story a thousand times. There is nothing like taking it out of its shelf, settling in a cozy chair, opening this masterful work of art, and being hit with that distinctive smell of the pages – comforting and even seductive. On those pages – words. These endless combinations of black symbols hide entire worlds in them. You start reading, and the book begins telling you its secrets. It introduces you to fantastic places, thoughts of people that have long passed away, wisdom gathered from generations and generations of undetermined authors, and even cheeky love stories and silly dramas.

Indulging oneself in the company of a good book means indulging in the peace that we create around us while we slow down in this modern world that always seems to be rushing off to somewhere. More often than not, we find ourselves in this progressive society where a whole new religion grasps our dedication like nothing has ever before – the cult of the screen. Being available to us in many shapes and formats, media throws us deeper into the rabbit hole by bending reality and making us waste hours looking at the unrealistic representation of everyday lives. Often, we are exposed to endless arrays of images and videos presenting a reality that only exists on the staged sets of people that earn their living from telling us what we should like and fantasize about – a perfect body, huge houses, exotic vacations, the newest gadgets and millions of other pricy material possessions.

And in all of this unnecessary stress and storm of flashing colors and noises, we find ourselves reaching for the extended hand of our oldest friends – the ones that taught us our first words and first numbers. Such numbers comforted us with stories in the quiet nights when we would cuddle with our parents in the coziness of our beds, the ones that taught us about the art, the history, and all of the seemingly unexplainable things happening in this world.

While technological advances and digitalization play a pivotal role in the advancement of our society, we should never forget where it all began – simple scribbles on pieces of paper and our whole history carried on the back of that old and wrinkled spine.

Marija Marinkovikj