2021/10/18

In the morning, a person asked me “How many books do you read a month?”. Talking about my reading is embarrassing because I am not a serious reader who doing hard work. I won’t read for studying with stoicism but read for just killing time, and also I read too randomly so in my head various concepts are always scattered like my room. “Bookmeter,” the site I use for recording my reading says that I’ve read about 1000 books these five years. But of course, much reading doesn’t tell that you are great. All I can say is that my “scattered” reading is very me.

I’m reading Eric Hoffer’s “Working and Thinking on the Waterfront”. Eric Hoffer is a person who worked as a stevedore and thought his philosophy. He hadn’t learned at any academic places but reached his original stage. It might be embarrassing to say this but I respect and follow him as thinking I would be like him. Once, I thought that “success” is all. Getting money and fame… that’s all. Yes, I still have that kind of desire. I am not God. But if I do keep on thinking even if I get the hard situation, then this life will become the life of a “succeed man”…

“Why should I live this sh*t life?” or “Why is my life so/too miserable?”. I remember that once I thought like these. I couldn’t get a fine job, and at my office, I had been suffered from economic problems and pressure. I drank a lot of alcohol to die soon… but nowadays I think about them as “that’s life”. Being born like me and given this life can be unique and precious. Yes, this life can’t be a shining life. But the life I should live. Anyone can’t live my life. All I can do is to think more and write my journal, do my job, and produce something creative. As a silkworm makes strings.

Being bored with “Working and Thinking on the Waterfront”, I read Haruki Murakami’s short stories or Yoshio Kataoka’s “Coffee Calls”. Eric Hoffer, Haruki Murakami, and Yoshio Kataoka. These three authors are all the people who don’t rely on academic things or existing things, but just learn the world with their physical senses and keep on thinking. I also think the things by the sense/feeling with asking like this. “Does that fit me?” Therefore at the first, I rely on my hunch, then logic follows it. So my thinking style is very uncertain and random. I might have to call it “human thinking”.