British English

4. Write a descriptive essay about a library.

I always wondered what knowledge was. Was it the voice in your head that tells you the
correct answer to one of the questions your professor asked you? Was it being able to recite
pi up to its twelfth digit? Was it even the feeling you had about yourself, that inescapably
tells you when you are feeling confident or insecure? How could one know?
As I stepped through the old wooden door, hearing its screaking and cracking noises
in both of my ears, I saw an overwhelming amount of people’s lifeworks in front of me.
With closed eyes I tried to imagine how many hours every row, every shelf, every book,
every page, every sentence, every word, every letter, every thought must have taken
someone, some time. A tingling feeling worked its way from my legs to my heart and to my
head and eyes, at last. Amazement! Amazement for all the human beings who had enough
knowledge to scream it out into the world, making their own personal readings open to other
individuals, who continued to compare these works to their own lives, making the stories
about themselves, dreaming big and enable these masters to be passed on, like folklore. The
silence in the room was so loud. Like a canon, I heard various people chanting right through
my ears, directly into my brain, even though my eyes would see that nobody was saying a
word. The people tried to lure me to their books, they wanted me to read their pieces, one
louder than the others. From Julius Caesar and Robin Hood, to Harry Potter and Whitney
Houston, they all were there. With every careful step I made along the narrow aisle, some
voices shut, some others tuned in. Overtowered from giant wooden racks, I felt as small as
an ant, looking up to the tip of an oak tree, knowing it could never inhabit all of it. Every
thought I had at some point in my life, someone probably had before me. Every thought
someone had while writing something down, I was able to turn into a completely new one.
The books smelled as old as time. Wet wood, a bit of dust and a touch of my grandparents’
attic, it reminded me of.
With this never-ending amount of opportunities of works to dip into, stories to
discover, that might take you over the highest of mountains or dive up the darkest of oceans,
and facts to learn that had the power to change your whole point of view on your
existence- How could one know what knowledge was? One could never, but I did as I saw
hundreds of books stapled in front of me like an endless domino line.
That was the gift of humanity: People pouring their hearts out in front of a stranger,
rather than their glasses, and that stranger drawing a glimmer of hope from it, 200 years
later in time; People writing their acknowledgements down as comprehensible as possible to
make them accessible to the future, and the future making cellphones out of them, that allow
me to speak to my friend, 2000 kilometers away; People reading and extracting preventions
from past mistakes that caused wars, and saving 20000 lives. That is knowledge, all in one
room. Sitting down on an old, comfortable chair, the tingling feeling turned into a warm
one- Gratefulness for being allowed to escape my life for a moment and open up any other
one. Libraries are the epitome of knowledge and a gift, that keeps on giving, as many people
will continue to write, create, discover.