THE HATCHING OF A BOOK DRAGON - INVICTUS MANIFESTED

Ever since I was a small kid I read a lot. I must have been 7 years old when I read like hundreds of pages each month. I had an insational thirst for stories and knowledge and it never left me.

As a young kid, I was a regular at the local library. I was a very shy and introverted but very curious girl. I hardly dared to talk to people, especially grownups. I’d stutter, my face would turn red, my stomach would contract into a stone and my body started to shake.

But the ladies and the gentleman who worked at the library were an acceptation. The were calm and not “real people”. They were Librarians, which to me meant the were a different and safe species to interact with.

I was still nervous, but I always managed to I ask them to help me find the right book without a full blown panic attack (though I had no idea that was what I was experiencing at the time).

After a while we got to know each other a little and I guess they recognised my serious and organised nature when it came to books. And it must have been pretty obvious that I had trouble approaching them when there were other people around. So at the young age of at most 10 years old, I was allowed to consult the cabinets with the index cards on my own.

Only the librarians were allowed to use them and some worthy grown up regulars. I felt so honoured to be granted this privilege and I was very serious about it. Every now and then I noticed an index card wasn’t in the right place and fixed it. It was also so nice to be able to go my own way and not having to deal with other people when it was busy. This helped me to relax a bit more around them because I didn’t have to deal with them.

I talked to the librarians a little more each time. A small chat about what I was taking home with me when I was at the register. A conversation about how we both like the book when I turned a novel back in. It slowly grew from there. I swear, my first real social skills were developed there and build a bridge for me with those scary and unpredictable “real” people.

Now I don’t have any social anxiety anymore, but I still feel more comfortable among scholars, librarians, painters, inventors, dragon riders, dwarves, elves, hobbits, maiar, sirens, and witches than “real” people. I guess they are still too unpredictable to me.

The library and books were the answer to more problems; In secondary school I felt so out of place and I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t have the academic training my classmates had and I struggled with every subject; Dutch language, spelling, history, biology, geography, French, math, German… I was in big trouble and I knew it.

One of the stacks of notebooks. I write down what I find useful in all I read.

I pulled up my sleeves to get to the bottom of it and got to a pretty philosophical solution; I shouldn’t just learn to model the skill they were teaching, like knowing when to push a button. No, I should really deeply understand how everything works and why you should push a button in the first place. Not general knowledge, but deep knowledge of which you can derive everything form. So, you could say, I accidentally discovered top down learning before the concept was known to me.

I followed this approach for each topic I struggled with. I was furious with my own inadequacy and attacked my ignorance with a serious vengeance. I just couldn’t let it go.

So for history I devoured every book I could find about Egypt, our topic at the time, and passed the exam with flying colours. For German I bought the book Never Ending Story in German (it was written in German by Michael Ende) and read the 400 page book in my summer vacation twice. My German teacher was very pleasantly surprised that my grades suddenly went up. I was over the moon that I had finally cracked the code to get myself through secondary school and eventually out of social hell.

This approach has served me well in many fields. I had no academic troubles at school anymore. Well, accept for math, that took me a few years, but I eventually got there ;-) But honestly to graduate hardly took me any real effort. And that meant I had time and energy to put into other fields. Like to get that hang of the social stuff.

The library is also safe. Even if you are a dyslexic with a beehive mind like me. You can fail and get up in privacy with with help of books and the library. You can fail forward. I have and if I can, so can you.

So what’s the point of me telling you all of this? That you should love books? That you should visit your local library? No, the point is that both books and your local library are gateways to creating the life your want for yourself.

To have those questions, that won’t leave you alone you, answered. Really answered. To find and create your own personal solutions for your challenges too. No matter how inadequate or messed up you think you are.

And don’t be fooled by the internet and AI. They can be useful, but often are just stepping stones. At the same time Internet and AI easily get you trapped in the shiny object syndrome of quick fixes. Truly deep questions and complicated problems are really worthwhile answering, so you have to work at it. Truly valuable questions don’t get a good answer by just a 1 minute YouTube clip or even a 90 minute podcast.

You really need to take the machine apart and understand all the parts and how you relate to it. Then you put it together and keep battle testing it. Over time you’ll naturally tune it to your own needs and preferences.

What helped me in this proces, was to make notes. I have a whole stack of notebooks with my notes on various topics (see images). And make no mistake; these aren’t notes to “fix” myself. These are notes to create myself, to create the life I want, to shape my personality to my own standards.

To me, books are the gateway to real deep knowledge and when you embrace the

responsibility to rid yourself of as much of your own ignorance as you can, and take it up as an adventure, you will be rewarded greatly.

Gradually I’ve become the master of my own fate and the captain of my soul more and more. And that’s where the compasses to freedom, happiness and inner peace lie.

I wonder if I'm one of the few bookdragons with experience like this, or if this is a common phenomenon. So if you have any thoughts on this, I'd love the hear them!