In Praise of The Librarian

I first heard of Nietzsche from Sister Rita Mishael, the strict librarian at my elementary school. I'll refer to her as The Librarian from here. I was fortunate to have such a learned librarian. She also took us through Christian Living, for she was a nun. Her teaching notes were always sprinkled with quotes from various philosophers and psychologists.  

I didn't always like The Librarian. The first time I interacted with her, she made a remark that my parents didn't bring me up properly. It stung so much! I, for one, made sure to register my displeasure. And of course, she didn't like me either. All the students found her accent weird and we made fun of her accent any chance we got. I'm quite certain it infuriated her. The Librarian made it her life's mission to instil discipline in us. Children are always bound to resist and this didn't make it easier on any of us. I wasn't a rowdy boy or anything like that, but I did share the same distaste every other student had for her. For example, I remember one time when The Librarian punished the whole class. She made us write more than one hundred lines as punishment for something I can't remember. She would also let us take off our shoes before entering the library. We always had to mop the library floor after the library period. It was always best to avoid her. 

One day I was tending to my garden, for we had a term project where we had to grow sweet potatoes in the school orchard. Some kind of Agriculture project. It wasn't really taxing and I enjoyed that term. Anyway, I used to spend a lot of time in the garden. The convent was very close. The Librarian would always pass by the garden to see how our plants were doing. She was appalled by the fact that some of the students didn't care for their plants that much. But I was always in the garden and she would offer some gardening advice anytime she saw me there. She even helped water my sweet potatoes one time by fetching water from a well close by. That's about the time my attitude toward her began to soften. She always had a lot of suggestions, and there was a time she gifted me some exotic seeds for me to nurture at home. I was becoming more comfortable around her so I started going to the library more often. She would allow me to spend time at the library, but I still had to take off my shoes. You see, the reason why most of us didn't like her was that the first thing she did as the new librarian was to establish some draconian rule. The Librarian would choose the book for us, as opposed to how we had the choice of selecting books of our choice. We resisted this imposition with all our might. To add insult to injury, she would make us write a book report. The Librarian would punish you if you failed to submit your book report. Ever the scheming kid, I figured out a way to get around this nuisance. I'd never read the books she'd choose for me as a sign of rebellion. I would simply borrow someone else's book. I got around the summary exercise by reading the blurb of the book, and then I would fabricate a suitable ending using my imagination. I knew there was no way she'd read all the books in the library. I'd been doing this secretly most of my elementary school years. No one would ever force me to read a book I didn't want to read. Until I fabricated an ending for the wrong book. The Librarian gave me an autobiography of Nietzsche and I used the same formula to write the book report. Unfortunately, I didn't know she was a philosophy major, so it didn't take much for her to catch onto what I'd been doing. 

I was sitting in class one day and a girl from a senior class came to summon me to the library. Usually, naughty students were summoned to the library when classes were going on. I knew that being summoned to the library never ended well for the student thereafter. It didn't help matters as I had a crush on the senior, so I was thinking of how I would salvage my reputation. As I followed her to the library, the atmosphere became ineradicably ghoulish. I could feel my pulse racing as if I was suddenly ill. I went to the library and The Librarian made me wait for what seemed like an eternity before interrogating me. She started asking me questions about my book report on Nietzsche. Of course, I didn't have any valid excuse. She went on and on about how a student should develop the habit of absorbing every sort of information during their developmental stage. To be very honest, I didn't understand half of what she was saying. I couldn't even pronounce Nietzsche! It was so obvious I never read the book. I was now on her radar and I couldn't trick her anymore. Oddly, however, she didn't punish me the way I thought she would. I can bet it was because we were gardening buddies. She asked me to write an actual book report on Nietzsche's autobiography. So around the age of 11, I had to digest information from a classical book on human existence. My dad's natural reaction was that the book was way above my level. No, I never told anyone I was in trouble. I went along with how everyone complained about The Librarian's rigorous methods. However, it was a punishment so I had to complete it. I was forced to digest this heavily convoluted book above my level. 

I already had a voracious appetite for reading, but I only limited myself to sci-fi and fantasy. Occasionally I would also read the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. In The Librarian's class, my fellow students and I were the guinea pigs on whom she dumped her philosophy material. Look at how noble deeds are concealed, she would quote from Pascal. No one would fully understand what she was saying. You might've guessed by now that her class was super boring. The revelatory moment for me came when I beat a game I had looked forward to completing in a long time. I won't mention the game because I wasn't supposed to play such a game at that age. Big clue, it was a hack and slash game. After completing the game, I felt so empty and unfulfilled, because I wondered, what next? Then I started to catch onto some of these ideas The Librarian had been teaching. The uncanny thing was, I understood the meaningless and futility of everything because I now had context. I had a lot of awards, and subsequent awards weren't very fulfilling. What was reiterated most in Nietzsche's writings and I tend to remember it the most, is that everything is baseless. It was slowly creeping into my worldview. 

The difficult part was that I didn't have a lot of people with whom I could talk about this stuff. The only other person was The Librarian, but her conversations usually went above my head, I could never quite fully understand her. I didn't dislike her anymore. There was a time we went to play basketball on the school court and The Librarian came to drive us away. She told us we could not use the court. But my brother was part of the basketball crew and being the good boy that he was, he went to ask her for permission. To be honest, my brother just shilled for these teachers. These are the kinds of problems kids my age were supposed to have. But I had started questioning existence itself by that time. 

Of course, I've always known that childhood is supposed to be a deeply enjoyable part of anyone's life. However, the self-awareness I developed early on made me realize how meaningless everything is. Books have always been the most potent source of information for me. I think that every book is like a sum total of someone's life that can be absorbed in a single day. That's how I acquired a love for autobiographies. I'm deeply grateful to The Librarian for helping me to realize that there is a whole lot of things I can't discover if I limit myself to my bubble. That is why I write this essay in praise of The Librarian.