January 18, 2008

I noticed something as I was checking for out of place books at work today. We used to have two popular display racks, one for general display (marked with a blue sticker), and one for scholarly science and business journals (marked with an orange sticker). We got rid of the scholarly journal section to save space last year. We're always worried about saving space here. The thing I noticed was that though we don't have those journals anymore, the rack is still on the floor, it just doesn't have any journals in it. So, instead of saving space, like we wanted, we're just saving orange stickers, which is really dumb because we don't even have any other use for orange stickers. All we have is this empty rack and several thousand useless orange stickers. We were supposed to have space. I don't really know why I think this is so interesting, but I can't help but think how easy it is for me to look at that rack in the corner of the library and think that it's a waste, yet be disinclined to look at myself, and all the things I've wanted to do but never got around to, and think the same thing. I guess that's really it, isn't it?

"How great would it be if the value of our life was judged by the things that we meant to do, and not just the things we actually did?"

-Dr. Yoshiko Matsushita Arrao (old psychology professor)