A little while ago, I made reference to my stubbornness in one of my blog entries. A few days later, I attended the last ladies meeting at church where our pastor’s wife, Shelley, shared a brief overview of the book of Ruth, one of my favourite passages of scripture. She spoke of Ruth’s character as an example of what a godly woman should be like. The first characteristic of Ruth’s personality that she brought out was her determination. Ruth 1:18 says in part, “When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined… she stopped urging her”. So, I began to wonder, am I really stubborn or am I actually just determined? Somehow determined sounds so much better, almost godly in comparison!

I’ve been pondering this question off and on for awhile now (one would think my brain had better things to do!) so I finally went to my dictionary to see what light it could shed on the matter. The definition of stubborn included “firm” and “determined” but also “rigidly firm in will or purpose”. Ouch! I don’t like to think of myself as rigid. The definition of determined sounded better. It included “resolute”, “firm in purpose” and “free from doubt or wavering”. No mention of rigidity there.

Next, I checked my thesaurus. Synonyms for stubborn included inflexible, inexorable, obdurate (I had to look those two up in the dictionary but even the sound of them is nasty), relentless, rigid, steadfast (the only nice sounding word on the list!), unbending, uncompromising, and unyielding. Again, being determined sounded a lot better. It’s synonyms included decisive, intent, resolute, resolved, set and settled.

Hmm… Maybe I should stop trying to convince people that I’m stubborn and claim to be determined instead!

The price of bread has suddenly jumped from 88 yen a loaf to 107 yen. That’s an increase of 22%. Though I haven’t paid attention to the prices, I understand that the same thing is happening to noodles, a staple of the Japanese diet. The unhappy Japanese consumers recognize that these increases are due to the rising cost of wheat.

Having spent last fall combining the wheat that could very well now be part of the bread I’m eating, I see things differently than I might have in the past. How can I complain when the farmer, who has been receiving an indecently low price for his grain for many years, finally receives an increase? Unfortunately, however, I don’t think he’s seen a 22% increase. There are many middlemen between the grain elevators in Killam and Viking and the bakery shelves here in Funabashi. When the price of grain drops again, as it no doubt will, will the price of bread go down too? I doubt it. I suspect, as has happened so often before, the middlemen will continue to be the ones who profit.

The increasing cost of living has been an interesting conversation topic in some of my adult English classes lately. Japan has traditionally kept itself isolated from the rest of the world and, though that is gradually changing, the majority of the people seem to have no idea that the economic difficulties that their country is experiencing are shared by the rest of the world. They’re often quite astonished to learn that North Americans grumble about the same things they do!