David’s life, as told by the author in the “Book of Lost Things”, reminds me of something similar which happened to my best friend. My friend used to live with his grandmother, and the two were quite close. Every morning, the grandmother would wake up early, prepare breakfast, and see off her grandchild to school. The grandmother loved fairytales, and she would tell them to her grandchild at every opportunity. One of the stories that remained in my friend’s memory was that of a school girl who, apparently, grew taller after getting rained on for three days in a week. Even when the grandmother became seriously ill, my friend would still lean on the grannies bed to listen to the story again. Eventually, my friend lost his grandmother and the loss was quite devastating - just like what happened to David.
Whenever my friend remembered how close he was to his grandmother, he would pick the book with his favorite story and read it by himself. Interestingly, my friend used to be short –just like the girl in the story. Believing that he would grow tall by getting rained on, my friend would expose himself in the rain at least three times a week during the rainy season. What happened next is anyone’s guess; he not only grew taller, but also gained a lot of weight. Although whether the rain contributed in any way to the increase in height is debatable, it was what my friend believed in, and no amount of persuasion would change his mind. In “The Book of Lost Things”, David exhibits these kind of believe, and by reading fairytales he brings the stories into life through the power of imagination.
“The Book of Lost Things”, written by John Connolly, and published in 2006, is one of the few novels that delicately infuse reality and imagination. The setting of the story takes place in England during the World War II. Early in the book, readers get to know more about the main character, David, a twelve year old boy who is on the brink of losing his mother. Although his mother later succumbs to illness and passes on leaving the young boy terribly shaken by the loss, David finds comfort in reading fairytales that his mother used to narrate to him. After sometime, his father remarries another wife named Rose – a nurse at the hospice.
Soon David finds himself in an unfamiliar territory after the family moves from London to Rose’s home country. One day, after an argument with his folks, David longs to escape from this new place. As he rests in his bed he hears his mother’s voice calling out for him and this incident makes him crawl into a hole within a sunken garden. This marks the beginning of David’s entry into the fantasy world. The events that follow sent a shivering feeling of fearful anticipation within the reader and, sometimes, the scenes appear quite odd. One of the important things we can learn from David is that the power of reading fairy tales cannot be underestimated; reading activates imagination, and this brings the tales that we read into life. In the later stages of the novel, David experiences the reality of this statement when he gets lost into a world of his own through imagination.
As Mike Dooley puts it in his book “Choose Them Wisely: Thoughts Become Things”, the power of thoughts and imagination is quite great and can never be underestimated. Dooley (3) writes “But as I now tell my readers, if you understand the nature of reality, that our thoughts unfailingly become the things and events of our lives” Dooley also argues that as people read, they filter the message conveyed by the author through their own thoughts, history and circumstances (Dooley 3). Dooley also warns that thoughts become things - not just the good thoughts, but also the negative ones too. The same view is held by Gungor (12) who writes that “everything that comes into one’s life is attracted by the images that you hold in your mind”. This means that what people think and ponder about really does matter.
These assertions are also supported by the study of metaphysics. In his book “Metaphorms and Information Physics”, Louis Houston (27) says that “thoughts create tension, and when we think about something we create tension between our imagination and reality”. Houston also adds “Think good thoughts and you will do good thingsthink bad things and you will do bad things”. Indeed, this scholarly works attest to the fact that thoughts can become a reality, whether the thoughts are positive or negative.
The fact that he was not on good terms with his step mother also contributed a lot to his misery. One day, after an argument with his step mom, David wished to get lost in his own world – a world of imagination. As he always wished, he dreamed being part of the tales that he always read about, being a participant at every stage of his mother’s life, and witnessing all what happened. It was now a complete circle. The words of his mother were fulfilled. The story of David is of great importance to us because it mirrors the life of young people in their childhood. In most instances, young people aspire to be, and do, some of the things that they hear in their childhood and, therefore, it is important to be aware of the things adults inculcate in young people.
The reason why David was able to participate in the fairytales that he used to read about is because he strongly believed in the tales, and had some emotions attached to them. After leaving London, and settling in his step mother’s home country, David was not comfortable with his new environment and this came to peak when he argued with the step mother. As the author puts it, “David dreamed being part of the tales he was no longer a child hearing these stories for another time. Instead, he was a witness to them all to see”. Therefore, it was a process that he prepared for, and eventually became a part of it. The loss of his mother made David to read more of the fairytales, and he longed for similar experiences to the ones found in the novel.
Reading books was the only consolation for the young David because it was the only thing that connected him to the memories of his late mother. As time went by, the desire to be a participant in the tales grew. As the author puts it “in the weeks that followed the loss of his mother, David tried to lose himself in books, because his memories of his mother were inextricably interwoven with books and reading”. David missed his mother, and reading the fairytales was a way of keeping alive what his mother loved. Although, initially, he did not want anything to do with the fairytales, he could no longer deny the urge to read them.
“After her death, he tried to avoid these old tales for a time, for they were too closely linked to his mother to be enjoyed”. However, with time, he was able to overcome these fears after realizing that the stories “seemed to recognize something in him, or so he started to believe” The reason why he was compelled to read the stories was because he wanted to escape reality and create something akin to alternate reality. As his mother had always told him, the old stories seemed to create a kind of independent existence from the pages they existed.
David must have come to the realization that the line separating the reality from parallel reality was quite thin, and it was possible to fuse imagination to reality. This is particularly true considering his mother’s words “The world of the old tales existed parallel to ours, but sometimes the wall separating the two became so thin and brittle that the two worlds started to blend into each other.” This was the point when he started to imagine things and the crooked man soon appeared to him marking the beginning of imagination.
As Enoch Tan puts it in a web article , we create reality in our minds by choosing to believe in something. Although someone might have thousands of thoughts in their mind, the thoughts have no real power except for those supported with belief. Tan also adds that “it is important to understand that it is not our thinking that creates our circumstances, but the emotion that is attached to our thoughts”. The thoughts come from conscious suggestion, and David’s mother ensured this by creating an interest and desire to read fairytales. After the conscious suggestion, the subconscious memory then takes over, working day and night to cement that particular thought within the mind, and this is exactly the same thing that happened to David.
Such a view is also held by Donna Stellhorn who suggests that the statement -thoughts become things- is “based on the idea that anything that exists was first a thought.” This is true for people who think positively, as well as those who think negatively. This realization is a wakeup call to any educator that it is possible to induce and cultivate a certain behavior in young children by consistently presenting a certain way of thinking to them. Individual lives are shaped by what they feed into their minds, and this can be manipulated to yield positive or negative results. Again, by consciously controlling our thoughts, it is possible to live the kind of life that we need.
In conclusion, “The Book of Lost Things” is important to me as it reveals some of the ways we can nurture our minds to live the kind of lives we desire. Revisiting my friend’s story earlier in the essay, the similarities between these two scenarios is a true testament that thoughts that are accompanied by emotions subconsciously settle in our minds, and this makes it easy for the memories in the subconscious mind to occur without any struggle. Although both experiences appear odd at first, there are some useful lessons we can learn from them. The experiences teach us that we are what we think we are, and whatever we choose to believe in becomes part of our everyday life. Therefore, it is a matter of choosing what we want to feed into our minds. Whether the thoughts we feed into our minds are positive or negative does not matter; what matters is what we feed into the mind because at the end of the day, it is what happens in our daily lives.
Works Cited
Connolly, John. The Book Of Lost Things. New York, NY: Atria, 2006. Print.
Dooley, Mike. Choose Them Wisely:. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster , 2009. print.
Gungor, Ed. There is More to the Secret: An Examination of Rhonda Byrne's Bestselling Book
"The Secret". Nashville, TN : Thomas Nelson Inc, 2007. Print.
Houston, Louis M. Metaphorms and Information Physics. Bloomington, IN: Louis M. Houston,
2011. Print.
Stellhorn, Donna. Heal with hope. 2013. 5 May 2013
Tan, Enoch. Difference between Thoughts and Beliefs. 2013. 5 May 2013
