The Library Card I Never Use

Dispatches · 5 min read

There is a library card in my drawer that has been renewed twice and used perhaps four times. It is not waste — it is an option I like knowing I hold, which is a different kind of value.

Options are worth something unused

Plenty of useful things are kept for what they permit rather than what they do. The card costs nothing to hold and keeps a whole building available on any afternoon I decide I want it.

The building is the real service

Borrowing is only part of it. Somewhere warm, quiet and free to sit is rarer every year, and the card is the polite way of belonging there.

Use it occasionally anyway

Systems that go unused get cut. Turning up now and then is a small way of voting for the thing to keep existing.

Some things are worth keeping for what they make possible.

Part of an occasional series.