Tranquility // Grace Rogers

Post by Misha //

Because it is a hard time in which to have a lot of hopeful type emotions, I try to pay extra attention to the ones that present themselves, even if they are small and fleeting.

Someone told me that biologically speaking it is easier for the brain to form negative pathways than positive ones. Something about it being evolutionarily more important to be able to react quickly to fear or discomfort than to joy or ease. According to the theory, it takes something like seven seconds to form a negative neural pathway and almost twice as long to form a positive one. It seems like the kind of little fact that you hear about and integrate into your life and then years later bring up at a party or dinner or something with someone who has studied neuroscience and they tell you that, no, actually, it’s not really quite that simple at all. But no one has told me that yet, and so I will continue, for now, to believe it to be important for the health of my brain to dwell for a few extra seconds on any scraps of hopefulness that I come across in my daily life.

So. Yesterday I went to an event at an independent bookstore. This bookstore is located in the sort of old school outdoor suburban mall that normally you don’t associate with literary events or, for that matter, independent book shops. By that I mean, there is a Claire’s, a Cold Stone, a Bath and Body Works. But this bookstore is absolutely lovely and lovingly stocked and was, last night, packed to the absolute gills for a local authors night. There were tables of books laid out with handwritten cards. There was a rotating panel of book signings. People were milling around, buying books, meeting authors, squeezing past each other to browse the rest of the shelves. There were a lot of high schoolers there. Near the fantasy section, I heard one teenager avidly describe the plot of a book they were reading to a friend. Two others were discussing the merits of physical books in the very earnest way kids have of sticking a flag in something about themselves as people. She said, “for me, I will always prefer to read a physical book. Always.”

The whole night goes into my hopeful moments jar, but that kid, especially. Her earnestness and genuine love of books, which have always been so important to me and which people are constantly saying are dying or have died or will die soon. And yes, it’s true, in this world of Netflix and TikTok and Joe Rogan and the endless scrolling disaster, books are surely an unlikely survivor. So quiet and uncolorful and finite. And yet they continue to call out to us, draw us in, bring us together. If they can make it, is it so impossible that there’s hope for the rest of us?

Buy Grace Rogers’ ‘Mad Dogs’ here. Out via Sophomore Lounge.