BGM: Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World

It was a day off today. This morning, I went out of my group home to attend a meeting held by the English study club in my town. We read an English newspaper's article about an educational trial in Kyoto. Although it was a great one to read and discuss deeply, and also was so clear and easy to translate into Japanese, my understanding was rough. Therefore, when I tried to translate it into Japanese and also read that out loud to the other members, I couldn't show mine smoothly. My translation became ambiguous and awkward... I need to learn more.

This afternoon, after a nap, I went to the park near my home to enjoy the scenery full of cherry blossoms. The park was filled with many people, especially various families. The cherry blossoms were incredibly beautiful, therefore while watching them I lost my thought. Suddenly, I thought that all the people in this park would die after one hundred years - as Haruki Murakami wrote in his first novel. Yes, definitely. But, that kind of viewing the life must lose "this" touch/feeling of reality. We are here and also enjoying this moment. All the pleasure we can feel must be because we are alive in this world now, therefore this fact is precious.

After dinner, listening to the movie "The Social Network" soundtrack, I read Edgar Cabanas & Eva Illouz's "Manufacturing Happy Citizens". This book tells us how a kind of modern psychology treats the concept of "happiness", and the explanation is so edgy and spicy. Following this book's discussion, I remembered George Orwell's "1984". In my opinion, both books try to tell us a horrible situation. How could it be if the outer establishments as any governments or companies start to determine the meaning of happiness? How could it be if they start to say that you have to have a certain responsibility for your happiness? It must be YOUR problem, not the politic's issue... if they said so, then?

If this reading is correct, then this book must criticize MY happiness itself. I've been thinking that my happiness is based on my inner, personal mental health issues. Therefore I thought I needed to control my mental condition enough to face the world with a happy mind - I need to keep on asking this more to myself.