I started on my homework today. My homework for Japan. I got The Wind is Howling from the library. There are so many things to say about it. Mainly that I'm very impressed. I have not thought even half so deeply on life. Reading Ayako-san's story, how she pondered so many hard questions, I feel inadequate. Why have I never taken the time to consider so seriously the underpinnings of life? I think it is because, even when I didn't know what it meant, I always had a 'christian' outlook*. And this outlook, while it didn't explain away everything, made it easy for me to brush away serious concerns. On the other hand, I do remember being obsessed with Ecclesiastics a few years ago. Perhaps I managed to get the majority of my questions out while I was young, and therefore do not feel the need to think of them again as a I get older. I think I'll take this book as an opportunity to remedy that fallacy.
At any rate, Ayako-san's book is so interesting, and so easy to get into, I must guard against the sin of not actually reading it. Since it is a library book I can't write in the margins, as I have been learning to do in my schoolbooks, and that makes it difficult to actually respond to the ideas presented. Reading deeply, which is what I should be doing, is like a conversation. Reading with out responding, which is much easier, is like attending a lecture where you don't take notes.
*This outlook is commonly referred to as a christian worldview. It is used with the understanding that just because we both say we are christians doesn't mean that we see the world in the same light.
