What You're Looking For May Come Looking For You

Have you ever noticed how you always find what you’re looking for in the last place you look? Of course, the thing you’re looking for is in the last place you look because once you find what you’re looking for, your quest naturally ends. Yet, while searching, you may stumble upon unexpected treasures, things you didn’t even know you were seeking. This exploration can lead to remarkable discoveries, but it often doesn’t, because we are often in a hurry. If you’re like Pippy Longstocking (and I aspire to become more like her), you turn it into a game. Pippi calls herself a ‘thing-finder’. I think I’m a ‘thing-finder’ too. For now, that’s as far as the parallels between me and Pippy go.

When I take the time to go looking for things, I turn to various avenues: books and podcasts, a walk in the park or through town, into antique or junk shops, and in conversations with people. I will give you a little taste of my latest discoveries.

I recently read What You’re Looking For Is In The Library, by Michiko Aoyama. The book is a compilation of 5 short stories, tied together by a library and its eccentric librarian. I enjoyed this book a lot. There was something deeply satisfying about these slow-paced everyday tales. I identified with the main character in each of these short stories. They seemed familiar. Since reading it, I’ve tried to figure out the main themes I connected with. 

Michiko Aoyama’s main characters were all going through a transition of some sort. One character was trying to get her career back on track after raising a child. A young woman was frustrated with her job and trying to learn something new. Another character had just retired. There is a character who was considering a career change, and one that gave up on his art after his studies, but was looking for a way back. The key to each of their problems was to be found in their local library, where a talented librarian recommends books to each one of them. On the list of books the librarian recommends, there is always an unrelated title, which seems strange but the characters borrow it anyway. 

In essence, the stories echo the adage: All the answers are inside of you. The characters all have the answers to their questions inside of them, they just need a way to find them. In What You’re Looking For Is In The Library, they find what they are looking for in books that they would never expect to find the answers in. Their answers don’t instantly appear. It’s a process of interpreting their books, waiting, sitting with their question and living their lives. It takes a while, it demands patience and trust. Eventually, each character comes to realise what they need to do. 

I would love to visit this library. I wonder  which book the librarian would recommend to me. The thing is, you could probably pick up any book and find an answer in it if you looked closely enough. Is this the message Michiko Aoyama means to communicate? The reader will find what they need in the book, regardless of the author's intent. And she invites you, the reader, to do just that.

These are some of the things I found in What You’re Looking For Is In The Library:

• I found an answer to a puzzle I was trying to solve in my own writing project.  The five short stories in this book were each stand-alone, but they became even better when woven together, as a whole. Seeing a successful example of how this kind of book can be created was greatly inspiring and motivating.

• I found the stories to be simple and positive. As a new writer, I often feel the need to complicate my stories and prove my skills. Michiko Aoyama showed me how deeply satisfying and profound simplicity can be.

• I found Hiroya to be the character I most closely related to. He was an artist who identified as a NEET (not in employment, education or training). It hit close to home. Hiroya is 30 and struggling with his failures. I am 43 and a NEET too. Ouch. Reading his story gave me hope.

• Hiroya meets a high school friend who has been writing novels since they went to school together. His friend writes in his free time while working a full-time job. He enters competitions but has never won, and has never been published. Instead of being pessimistic and giving up, as Hiroya did with his art, his friend keeps on and stays hopeful. Both Hiroya and I were deeply impressed.

• A big message, that I took from the book, is that life is a series of coincidences, sometimes it just takes a while for them to play out. Once again, I come across the theme of time. As an impatient person, this is not a theme that I embrace with ease. As I mentioned before, these stories are slowly passed and in the artist Hiroya’s case, it took years for him to get to the point where he is when we read his story. For years he felt frustrated and useless. Then he discovered the library. 

I don’t have a community library with a mysterious librarian. Instead, I have a podcast app. This week, as I was looking for a podcast about witches in fairytales, I stumbled across a Podcast named Living Myth with Michael Meade. There were no episodes about witches, but the latest episode is entitled Unlocking Destiny and I gave it a listen. And then, I listened for a second time. There was so much to be digested from this episode that I can’t even try to get into right now, but I want to share a poem that he references at the end of the episode. It is a poem by Goethe called The Holy Longing:

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

because the mass man will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,

where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

a strange feeling comes over you,

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.

Now, arriving in magic, flying,

and finally, insane for the light,

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. 

How fitting this poem should be by a great German writer, one I have been meaning to get to know better. Somehow, Goethe came to me, through a powerful philosophical message. He has shown me how his work relates to my way of thinking, and now I need to know more. In my last post, I talk about the little card I found in Cape Town as a teenager, the one that read:

How does one become a butterfly? 

It’s when you want to fly so badly that you’re 

willing to give up being a caterpillar.

Goethe talks about dying to grow. The cycle of transformation and growing into ourselves. He uses darkness, a candlelight and a butterfly as metaphors. My heart was racing with excitement.

Lastly, I want to share something else I found in conversation with my 6-year-old daughter Izzie. She loves acting out characters from books and movies, she has a rich imagination and can create fantastical worlds, in which all these characters exist with her. She has a German tutor who recently introduced her to Pippy Longstocking. As a child, I must have watched the Pippy Longstocking movie, but I’ve never read the books. Izzie’s excitement about this fun character caught on and I ordered her a book. By now, I must have read this book a hundred times, but Izzie continues to be impressed by this character. And so am I. Pippi encapsulates everything that I am not. She lives alone and is independent. Pippy makes life fun, throwing eggs in her hair while making pancakes, and rolls out cookie dough on the kitchen floor because the table isn’t big enough for the 500 cookies she wants to bake. Pippi is strong enough to put bullies in their place but kind enough to give robbers each a gold coin after kicking their buts. She seems to be exactly who she is meant to be and she’s making the most out of life. Izzie tries to be more like her by sleeping with her feet on her pillow at night. I try to be more like her by playing the ‘thing-finder’ game. As Pippy aptly puts it:

‘The whole world is full of things, and someone needs to find them. And that’s what a thing-finder does.’

Free Colouring Page. Mr Knowsy 1.pdf

Download PDF • 274KB