I like to collect quotes, not inspirational junk usually, just bits of songs, something a character said that I could identify with, stuff like that. But once in a while I like a famous one.
There are two ways to look at life, as if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is. -Albert Einstein
I'd say I definitely get through life on the first half of that. People are often disappointed when the ask me, "What surprised you the most when you first came to Japan?" I can never give them a straight answer. Recently I've started giving an honest one sometimes - not in class of course, there it's just "oh, well, you have to change your shoes inside the school!" or some other similar lie they're happy to hear - but now that I can express myself better I've tried to explain to some of my friends that I wasn't surprised by anything. Not because I knew about everything that I would encounter beforehand or anything, just because I don't get surprised by stuff. I just accept it. What is, is. Of course I might not like some things, I might want (or try) to change some things, but the simple fact that they exist doesn't phase me.
I guess I'm kinda like Oz-kun here. "Oh, my dad tried to kill me and when I woke up it was 10 years in the future. Oh well, that's life, guess I'll help out this chick who keeps turning into a giant rabbit and attacking people since she's hanging around me." No, "What the hell happened to me??" or "Why the hell does a rabbit use a scythe?!?" Just, "That's life. Let's get on with it." Makes things easier on everyone.
I work with a teacher right now who's amazingly smart. I totally love her, and being at current my school is easier because of her. For some reason she belongs to the second school of thought in Einstein's quote. It seems incongruous with the way a smart person should be, but it just makes me like her more. Maybe because the "everything" she finds miraculous isn't the things that people usually get excited over. Me eating an apple without cutting it, for example. Sooooo tired of that one.....
No, the things she finds interesting, while I would never even begin to want to think about them on my own.......for some reason when she talks about them I start to see the miracle in them too. Like a story about a deaf and blind man whose mother developed a whole new system of braille just for him using hand holding. Now, he's a university professor. Or a book about how to sew bags with intricate designs to match your kimono. Thinking about it after the fact I'll realize I don't care a bit about that stuff. Yet for some reason while she's telling me about it I do. And not in a fake way.
Recently she's been lending me books she gets from the library. Sewing books, cookbooks, stuff my mom would like, not me. Definitely not me. I look at them when I'm bored at school. Which is pretty often. I ended up photocopying a bunch of recipes this week. I can't cook the stuff of course, and I only really have one person who'll occasionally cook for me, but I wanted them anyway. Weird....
