There is only one “me” in this world. It sounds obvious, but when I think about it, it feels strange. Why, among countless living things, can only I be “me”? And why are you and I so different from each other? Even so, how is it possible that I can understand your feelings?

I finished reading The Novel Thinking for Verbalization by Tetsu Ogawa.

While reading, I often thought, “He is a very smart person.” He is younger than I am, but his way of thinking is very clear. Later I learned that he graduated from the University of Tokyo, and it made sense to me. Of course, being good at studying does not always mean being truly wise. But many wise people are also good at studying. This book reminded me of that.

The book shows how a novelist sees the world, how they put it into words, and how they give it to others as a story. It felt like I was looking into the path of the writer’s thoughts.

One sentence stayed strongly in my mind:

“People feel moved by art because they decode a compressed work and accept the original ‘way of seeing’ of another person.”

When I read this line, I felt a quiet light turn on inside me.

Reading a novel is not only following the story. It is also rebuilding the writer’s way of seeing the world inside our own mind. The writer compresses their thoughts into the text, and the reader expands it again. This is why the same book can feel different each time we read it.

Readers try to find both the “universal” parts and the “personal” parts in a story. The universal parts connect us to the world. The personal parts become a mirror that shows us our own feelings.

When we read a novel, we receive the writer’s way of seeing. At the same time, we also see our own way of thinking more clearly. We borrow another person’s thoughts and discover our own again. Through this back-and-forth movement, I feel who I am now, and I understand myself more deeply.

Because reading helps me know myself and grow, novels are interesting to me, and I feel I can change little by little.