By Jenna deJong
It’s only day two of our service trip to Asheville, and it was today- a day completely without service- that I feel as though I have been affected by my surroundings.
I thought the next 12 hours were going to be light-hearted- we had originally planned to clean up abandoned homeless camps near the river but due to chilling, wet weather our plans were cancelled. Instead we decided to spend the unexpectedly free day touring downtown Asheville and it was here that I truly began to think of the impact this service trip could have on me and my fellow participants.
The experience/revelation occurred within 15 minutes of getting out of the car. Clutching our coats around us, we walked briskly to the first store we came to- a cute, local bookstore. We examined the colorful stickers, lightly touched the moleskin journals, and skimmed the back of books. A lover of books, I was content and happy but it wasn’t until one of the participants called me over that I was moved- touched in a way I will remember for the rest of my life.
Resting on a single bookshelf was a display reading “Blind Date with a Bookseller”. Each book beneath was wrapped tightly in brown paper and written on the brown paper were words- words describing the book by the people that read them. One thicker novel had words written in a skinny scrawl with black sharpie like “coming of age”, and “romantic” and “magical”. A thinner, shorter one was written in cursive and had words like “mysterious” and “fast paced” and “original”. Each book was completely covered and wrapped, hiding the artwork, titles, and authors attribution.
I was touched, not because the cliche saying aligned with the theme of the bookstore, but because the theme aligned with the service trip. Tomorrow our group will be visiting and interacting with the people
who are directly affected by homelessness; and while it would be easy to separate myself as “Us” and “Them”, I will not judge a book by its cover and write someone off at first glance. I will not assume I know their story. Instead, I will sit down and ask them questions- if they have family, what their dream jobs are, where they would like to take a vacation to, if they could have any pet, what it would be. It’s easy to write something, someone, off at first glance- but setting first impressions aside, it could actually be the greatest adventure you’ll ever experience.
Later into our exploring, we found a wall covered in blackboard paint titled “Before I Die”. On it were responses like “raising a confident woman” and “falling in love”. Thinking of the tiny bookstore, I decided that before I died, I would travel as much as I could, making connections and contributing to social issues as I went.
And maybe pick up a book or two.