bsd-bibliophile: Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me by Sakaguchi AngoTranslated by MaplopoBuy i

bsd-bibliophile: Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me by Sakaguchi AngoTranslated by MaplopoBuy it in paperback or an eBook on Amazon. Check out Maplopo and their other translations on their website.Quotes from Wind, Light, and the Twenty-Year-Old Me:Looking back and examining my history during my year as a teacher, strangely and completely satisfied, I feel as though that person was someone else; every time I think about it, it feels like a lie - an inexplicably transparent falsehood.“By nature, I give myself license to do things at whim; with my natural disposition, it’s impossible for me to obey the orders of others.”“Truly adorable kids exist among the ones that are considered bad. Children are all adorable, of course, but beautiful souls reside within the naughty ones. The naughty ones have warm hearts and an appreciation for the nostalgic.”“I was not in the slightest affected by these slurs, because those days I held myself entirely aloof from the worldly stuff, emotionally distancing myself from feelings of anger, sadness, hatred, or joy; I tried to live life allowing nature to take its course and didn’t fuss about anything, like a cloud drifting in the sky or water floating with the tide.”“I think it’s inherently wrong to reflect upon the way others think and act, instead of thinking and acting on one’s own…”In the midst of being absorbed by this vacant feeling, I came to imagine an apparition of myself sticking out its neck from the shadow of the clock on the wall and saying hello. I’d suddenly catch myself seeing myself, and I felt like my apparition was standing next to me and speaking to me, “Hey, what’s going on?” Although I like having my mind in a dull haze, sometimes my apparition would unexpectedly appear next to me like this and nag: “Hey, you! Don’t be so satisfied,” he’d say, glaringly.“I can’t be satisfied?”“Of course not. You must suffer. You must make yourself suffer as much as you can.”“For what?”“You suffer and only through that suffering will you be shown the answer. A person’s nobility lies in having oneself suffer. Everybody prefers being satisfied, even a beast.”Is this true, I thought?…“I could gaze at life so dear within every single drop of rain on a rainy day and within the sound of the madly screaming wind on a stormy day. I continued feeling this precious life in the leaves of trees, birds, insects, and those clouds that drifted above - always chatting with my heart.”“I cannot help but think my future holds only unhappiness for these three [students]. My initial gaze into what unhappiness was came not from my own relation to unhappiness, but from above the students’ gloom. This unhappiness means one is not loved; one is not respected.”“Men of [twenty-two], though, are more mature than men of forty or fifty. Their moderate nature comes naturally to them and is not fabricated, forced, or twisted like that of an older man. For a certain period in life, I think every man is an optimist like [Voltaire’s] Candide. Then they fall and become decadent. But, I assume most lose purity in their souls as their bodies become more decadent.”“Children act out because they’re sad; invariably, there is meaning behind their actions, therefore, we should never judge a child’s actions by what we see on the surface.”The troubles and agony children lock in their hearts are persistent and serious just as with adults, and perhaps even more so with children. Just because the reasons for their troubles are childish, we cannot conclude the depth of their agony is infantile. The degree of self-reproach and anguish is the same for everyone regardless of age, whether a boy of seven or a man of forty.“If you can’t help but do bad things, don’t use others. Act on your own. Good or bad, you’ve got to do things on your own.”“You see, I had wanted to become a novelist since I was a young boy. But I convinced myself I did not possess the talent. This deeply entrenched belief that had me give up right hope altogether could be what fundamentally drove me to madness and desperation.” -- source link
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