Toast to Life 35 (Wish I were younger)

I started reading Prof. Kazuto Ataka's "Shin Nihon" (NewsPick Publishing Co., Ltd., 2020) (photo below). 

Here are the reasons. I am often told by family members, "we talked about that right now. Why don't you ask that?", only I started asking the particular thing. With effort to try avoiding scolded like this, or to keep my brain (used-to-be tumored) staying away from aging, or even to do my job even a little better than the previous day. 

Speaking of "we talked about that right now...", I don't know if it's a sequela of a brain tumor or because there is a metastatic tumor of colorectal cancer in my lung. At the time of an anti-cancer medication drip for the tumors in the lung (the latest was June 16-19 in straight 48 hours home, and the pain & stomach uncomfortableness last until June 21, Monday), you feel uncomfortableness here and there around your body, which is quite annoying.

Return to Prof. Ataka's book. The content is very, very interesting, I am reading it more excited than doing poor non-fictions (normally I like them, though), and I feel my brain hardily absorbing new knowledge out of the book. Some phrases, however, have rather spiking expressions to me. For information, or "intelligence" in Mr. Ataka's term, younger people absorb higher more because they have less knowledge, but older people like me "have collected too much in his/her life" and "know too much", and make little progress (P183). Imagine a graph with X axis showing the age and Y the amount of knowledge: by aging you move to "long tail" side, meaning you sliding to right side of X axis, you will be less flexible in absorbing new information/ intelligence. Hmm.

Compared to that, children have high progressiveness. My 6th grade son is astonishing, for example. At his start of visiting cram schools for his junior high school exam coming this winter, he was so reluctant and complaint at the beginning to go to the schools twice a week. I was, however, quite shocked in a good sense to hear him saying, "studying is interesting!". Of course, his change owes to my wife who has been keeping guiding and cheering him up, always and everyday. 

But to me, even working home (also called as "house husband"), greeting him at the house door everyday at his return from school, I'm amazed at his changes.

I wish I could be like him. Oh, now I realize this may be the feeling of "I want to go back to when I was young".

(The photo on top shows the school book-bag my son shoulders. This type of a bag is unique to Japan, and my son, who was a little concerned with it at our return to Japan, but now he likes it the Nike mark on its side. To be continued.)