The Melancholy
"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 the sixth grade... my 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 station 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 fifty thousand into that...
"You get one in two thousand. 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 of myself to be... a special person up until that point. I enjoyed being with my family... and most of all... I thought my class in 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 would find them to be ordinary occurrences.
"Once I realized this... I suddenly found that my surroundings were beginning to lose their color. Brush my teeth and go to sleep at night. Wake up and eat breakfast in the morning. People do these 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?"
-from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu
_aQ
"During elementary school... when I was in the sixth grade... my 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 station 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 fifty thousand into that...
"You get one in two thousand. 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 of myself to be... a special person up until that point. I enjoyed being with my family... and most of all... I thought my class in 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 would find them to be ordinary occurrences.
"Once I realized this... I suddenly found that my surroundings were beginning to lose their color. Brush my teeth and go to sleep at night. Wake up and eat breakfast in the morning. People do these 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?"
-from Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu
_aQ