Confessions

by Kanae Minato

But I have to say that I’m less interested in catering to your adolescent whims and more concerned that you grow up someday to be people who are capable of considering the feelings of others—for example, the feelings of the person who receives such a thoughtless message in the middle of the night. To be honest, I doubt that anyone who was truly despondent, who was actually considering doing something drastic, would send an email to announce the fact to her teacher.

But I have to say that I’m less interested in catering to your adolescent whims and more concerned that you grow up someday to be people who are capable of considering the feelings of others—for example, the feelings of the person who receives such a thoughtless message in the middle of the night. To be honest, I doubt that anyone who was truly despondent, who was actually considering doing something drastic, would send an email to announce the fact to her teacher.

It’s much easier to condemn people who do the wrong thing than it is to do the right thing yourself.

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment: “Extraordinary people have the right to violate conventional morals in order to bring something new into the world.”

However, on a few rare occasions someone will come forward to counter this logic and argue that a murderer’s life is just as valuable as one’s own, regardless of status or station. But what kind of upbringing results in that sort of sensibility? I suppose it would come from a childhood where someone whispered fairy tales about the “precious value of life” in your ear every night before bed (if there are any such fairy tales). And if that were the case, I suppose I could understand ending up with that kind of attitude—even though it couldn’t be further from my own feelings.

Our values are determined by the environment we grow up in; and we learn to judge other people based on a standard that’s set for us by the first person we come in contact with—which in most cases is our mother. So, for example, a person who has been raised by a cruel mother might find another person—let’s call him A—might find A to be a kind person; but another person who was raised by a very kind mother might find A to be cruel.

Even the smartest person can go through a bad period in her life, a time when, through no fault of her own, she has the bad luck to be taken in by someone else.