The Value of a Book in a Noisy World

Everywhere you look, someone’s selling.

My system. My method. My body.

Buy my course. Buy my certainty.

The hustle monkeys swing through the feed, teeth bright with promise.

I got rich, and I can show you how.

Look at my perfect wife.

My perfect life.

My leased joy parked out front.

It all starts to feel dirty—manufactured—like a dream someone’s trying to flip for profit.

You scroll, you like, you scroll again, and the noise gets inside you, until your own life dims beside the glare.

But reading—reading cuts the wire.

A page doesn’t perform.

It waits.

It breathes.

It lets you slow down enough to hear your own thoughts again.

A book doesn’t track your engagement

or offer a checkout code.

It asks for your time, your quiet, your hands.

You can fold it, mark it, leave it on the nightstand.

It exists in the world you can touch—ink, paper, dust.

And maybe that’s the small mercy now: for the price of a latte, you can disappear

into a story that expects nothing. A book costs little and gives more.

Out there, beyond the screens and the constant buzz, someone’s always pulling the strings.

But inside a book, there are no strings to pull, no commands to follow.

Just words, quietly waiting on the page, unhurried, unaffected.

And somewhere in the space between those words, you feel it—the soft, steady rhythm of being human again.

Author: R.E. Hengsterman, MSN, MA, M.E., RN

Registered nurse, night-shift administrator, and author of The Shift Worker’s Paradox

Nursewhowrites.com

For educational purposes only. Not medical advice.