Saturday, July 01, 2006

What if God was One of Us?

As you're aware, this isn't an anime blog, and this post isn't about an anime either. I'm just a regular guy who got into watching anime purely for recreational reasons (at the instigation of Stripey) and to replace an unhealthy diet of TV shows. Come to think of it, I don't watch the telly anymore: the MBA kind of took that luxury away (no way can I stay glued for fixed times on regular days!). So nowadays, I supplement my entertainment with anime - freely available on the internet, and always a click away with bittorrent.

I digress: I've been seeing this really good anime called 'The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya'. To sum it simply, Haruhi Suzumiya is a typical Japanese schoolgirl who also happens to be God. Not like the God of the Judeo-Christian faith, but God in the sense that she is able to wish things into existence, without even realising it. A dangerous friend to have, but that's what the protagonist, Kyon (regular Japanese school boy in her class), is dealing with. It is like having a nuclear weapon as a friend, and certain interested groups of people are concerned that she should be kept as 'entertained' as possible.

Anyhow, I saw the latest episode (#13) of it two days back and a monologue from our heroine in the middle of the episode struck me as apt description of how small we really are.

First off, some context: Haruhi was talking to Kyon. She is not a typical Japanese high-school girl. In the series (which was re-arranged and not showed in sequence intentionally), Haruhi formed the SOS Brigade club with the expressed purpose of finding espers, time travellers and aliens. Unwittingly, she recruited one of each species (and Kyon, the narrator). The SOS Brigade get into the hijinks that can only happen in anime, and the producers puncture the action with philosophical insights into the creation of the universe, time travel and whatnots. Haruhi also has the ability to wish things into existence, and she's suffering from angst and feeling melancholic because life is too ordinary for her: she also doesn't know she has the power of God.

The monologue (translated from Japanese and copied off the subtitles of Ep #13):


Say... Have you ever realized how insignificant your existence is on this planet?

I have. It's something I'll never forget.

During elementary school, when I was in sixth grade, the whole family went to watch a baseball game at the stadium. I wasn't particularly interested in baseball, but I was shocked once we got there.

There were people everywhere I looked. The ones on the other side of the stadium looked like squirming grains of rice all packed together. I wondered if every last person in Japan had gathered in this place.

And so, I asked my dad, 'Exactly how many people were in the stadium?'

His answer was that a sold-out game meant around fifty thousand people. After the game, the path to the stadium was flooded with people. The sight stunned me.

So many people around me, yet they only made up a fraction of the people in Japan. Once I got home, I got a calculator and did the math. We learned that the Japanese population was a hundred million and some in social studies. Divide 50,000 into that and you only get one two-thousandth. I was stunned again.

Not only was I just one little person in that sea of people in that stadium, but that sea of people was merely a drop in the ocean.

I had thought myself to be a special person up until that point. I enjoyed being with my family, and most of all, I thought that my class in my school had the most interesting people in the world.

But that was when I realized it wasn't like that. The things that happened in what I believed to be the most enjoyable class in the world could be found happening in any school in Japan. Everyone in Japan would find them to be ordinary occurrences.

Once I realized this I suddenly found that my surroundings were beginning to lose their colour. Brush my teeth and go to sleep at night. Wake up and eat breakfast in the morning. People do those everywhere.

When I realized that everyone did all these things on a daily basis everything started to feel so boring. And if there were so many people in the world, there had to be someone living an interesting life that wasn't ordinary. I was sure of it.

Why wasn't that person me?

That's all I could think about until I graduated from elementary school. And in the process, I realized something. Nothing fun will happen if you sit around waiting.

So I figured I would change myself in middle school. Let the world know that I wasn't a girl content with sitting around and waiting. And I conducted myself accordingly. But in the end, nothing ever happened.

Before I knew it, I was in high school. I thought something would have changed.
Of course, our dear heroine, being almighty, did change things through sheer willpower alone (without realising it either). What struck me was how the thoughts that she had were probably not unique unto herself, but probably what we all come to feel at crucial points in our lives.

Just how significant can our lives be? Not everyone of us is going to be a superstar, model, or celebrity. Not everyone of us is going to be a world leader, opinion shaper, news maker. Not everyone will die a glorious death, have people worship us, or lead a congregation of believers.

In fact, most of us are going to be nondescript, unheralded individuals, living lives that are ordinary, simple and unadorned. Haruhi is right in one aspect: life is going to be boring and it is up to us to make it as exciting as we want it to be. It doesn't mean we have to be God to do it - it just means making the effort to seek interesting avenues in life - explore the less explored.

Well, we all can learn lessons everywhere, and I've learnt one from an anime.

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