The Parable of the Bookshop

The illusions that you have about life, are like your earliest experiences walking through a bookstore. The books in this store cost a lot of money, but that only seems to make them more attractive and valueable. As you grab books from the shelves and skim through them, each one feels unique and surprising. The store, it seems, is filled with untold heaps of value. You fill a basket up with books and have a plesant talk with the lady at the service desk.

Then one day, many years later, you return to the bookstore. The building looks smaller than it did when you were a child. At first the memories flood back, and you want to believe that this is the same place that you always loved to visit. The same woman works at the service desk, but she’s older, and she doesn’t smile anymore. In fact, she almost seems to sneer as you glance her from between the aisles.

The books, you see, are more expensive than they’ve ever been, and the titles are all the same kinds of familiar things. None of them seem helpful or entertaining to you like they once did. What once seemed like a cozy retreat is now revealed to only be another place where people go to waste their lives away. It doesn’t bother you to see this for what it is. However, you know that there will be many people after you, who wander into the shop with wide, youthful eyes, and they too will see value in the nothing that you once saw–only most will never realize there is no value.