Looking for Alaska I.

"We are engaged here in the most important persuit in history: the search of meaning. What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules of this game and how might we best play it?"

The nature of the labyrinth, I scribbled into my spiral notebook, and the way out of it. This teacher rocked. I hated discussion classes. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn´t sound dumb, and I hated how it was all just a game of trying to figure out what the teacher wanted to hear and then saying it. I'm in class, so teach me.

And teach me he did: In those fifty minutes, the old man made me take religion seriously. I've never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.


--- Looking for Alaska, John Green.