what it is to...

It seems like the busier I become, the more things I have that I want to write about.  During the last couple of days, my mother told me a couple of interesting things and I wanted to write it down.

1. What it is to be a professional

I've written before that my mother goes to Curves, a female-only gym where she works out every day.  She isn't happy with the service she gets there, and has complained (politely) about it to the staffs.  But they haven't improved -- they even have a little notice on the wall asking the members to be patient if their service isn't good enough because some staffs are in the process of learning.  My mother thinks their problem is that they lack the sense of pride in what they do.  "They don't understand what it is to be a professional."

I wonder what patients will say if a new doctor asked them to be patient or toloerant if his service wasn't good enough because he was in the process of learning.  It doesn't sound like a good excuse, though I guess patients are called patients because they're supposed to be patient.

It's slightly different but it reminds me of what a famous cram school teacher said to his students.  "It doesn't matter whether you like your job or not.  You're being paid for it, and when someone pays you, they don't care if you like your job.  All that matters is that you take responsibility in what you do.  Having pride in your job doesn't mean you like it; it means you take full responsibility and provide the best service."

2. What it is to find a partner

My mother had a shocking moment when she visited me last autumn.  After taking a shower, she dried her hair and was tidying up the hair-dryer when I came in and took it away from her.  I told her furiously that I hated how she wrapped the twisted electric cord around the dryer.  "Make it straight before you wrap it around."

She thought I had become neurotic because of all the anatomy practice.  She's glad that I've become a bit relaxed now, but she still remembers the incident when she uses the hair-dryer.  The other day, she asked me if I was seeing anyone.  When I said I didn't know what to look for in a man, she only said one thing: "I hope you find someone who cares about getting the electric cord straight before he wraps it around the dryer."

3. What it is to die

My mom was doing the laundry when she found a red disgusting bee-like bug.  It hadn't gotten into the room yet, but she decided to kill it with a spray because it was "so disgusting".  It didn't look like it was going to die so she sprayed a couple of times and watched as the bug eventually suffered to death.  "So I realized even bugs suffer when they die.  It's obvious, but I felt kind of sorry.  The poor thing is still lying on the balcony."

It reminded me of an essay by Naoya Shiga.  It was written during his recuperation after surviving a fatal accident.  He had realized that death and life were not opposites but that death was part of life.  He describes some deaths he witnesses, and one of them is that of a rat with a skewer stuck through its neck.  Some children are making fun of it, but the rat tries to live until the end.  It doesn't give up; it keeps getting up and trying to get out of the ditch.  And Shiga observes that animals are not even allowed to commit suicide.

4. What it is to have a pharmacology test in three days

I have to go back to studying.

inheritance

When Angelina Jolie told the world that she had cut off her breasts to prevent cancer, I didn't really have any opinion about what she did.  I didn't think it was *that* tragic to cut off her breasts -- there's more to femininity than breasts could ever speak, and even considering Jolie's profession -- she's not her breasts as much as I'm not my breasts.  Obviously.

Neither did I think she was brave and wonderful to have told the public that she had cut off her breasts.  The news gave a headsup to women all over the world, but as far as I know, it's not like she has offered to pay for every single surgery needed because of mutant BRCA1/2.  She had the money and the support she needed and did what she could to protect herself, just like anyone would do.  I didn't really understand what the big deal was.

But today, I was reminded of the difficulties patients and might-be-patients of hereditary diseases face.  They want to know the truth, but if they get tested, it might violate the right of their family members -- the right to stay uninformed.  It's great if it turns out they're safe, but if not, parents end up blaming themselves and it can also cause some hurtful arguments.

It especially shocked me when an anonymous patient said her mother had told her to give up having a family of her own.  She said it was cruel and pointless to produce another human who would have to go through the same pain.  It does make sense in a way, but the patient also has the right to live her life the way she wants.  Babies are not born to fulfill the parents' desires, but in reality, people have babies because they want babies.  If the patient wants a baby, shouldn't she be allowed to have one just like anyone else?

If people start thinking like the mother above, people with hereditary diseases are doomed to suffer discrimination.  Our lives will heavily depend upon what kind of genes we have.  But we all have genetic deficiencies regardless of whether it shows or not.  No one is perfect.  And it's hard to define what is "normal".

It seems like science has come a long way.  It needs a mature society that can accept what it gives.  Maybe this is when ignorance becomes a crime.  And I guess Jolie, after all, has given us a good chance to think about something very important.



Note: will be absent till my pharmacology test is over.  Take care!

creativity

Today we did our last experiment using two groups of mice.  We put some inflammation-inducing substance with and without betamethason (an anti-inflammatory drug) on a couple of ears and measured the thickness of each ear every thirty minutes to see the effectiveness of the drug.  This time, we couldn't get the results we wanted, but every time I do an experiment, I'm amazed by the creativity of all the past scientists who came up with all the unique methods and instruments.

Like Pasteur and the flask he made to trap the micro-organisms in the air.  If it hadn't been for his flask, humans still might've believed that living organisms could appear spontaneaously out of no where.  Pasteur boiled some broth in his special flask and proved that it didn't rot (=no organisms appeared from that boiled broth) unless some micro-organisms entered the flask.

And even statistics -- we have all these tests that help us prove if there are significant differences between groups.  Apparently, we're supposed to hypothesize that there are no difference and do these tests to see if that hypothesis is wrong or not according to the data we have.

Coming from the humanities field, it really impresses me that humans could come up with all these ideas.  It sort of reminds me that when I studied the constitution, I was impressed by the idea as much as I'm impressed with the T test now.

mouse

I'm extremely tired.  I haven't been able to get enough sleep lately, not only because I'm busy with all the experiments and papers but also because I keep waking up at 6:30 for some reason.

Yesterday, we injected morphine to a couple of mice and put them on hot plates and pinched their tails with a clip to see how morphine affected them.

Today, we injected a couple other drugs to some virtual mice on the computer and observed their VBP/HF/HR while another group did the morphine experiment.  They worked with the mice right next to us where we were doing our task, and once in a while, when I moved my mouse and tried to move the cursor to a certain place on the screen, it would move on its own -- towards where the mice were.

Either way, vagal reflex is a huge trend lately -- at least around me.  Caffeine is supposed to strengthen the heart which means heart rate should rise, but it goes down.  Why?  It's a result of vagal reflex (caffeine⇒heart↑⇒BP↑⇒vagal reflex⇒heart↓⇒BP↓=back to normal).  Norepinephrine is also supposed to strengthen the heart, but heart rate goes down.  Why?  Again, vagal reflex (α receptors contracts the vessels and BP rises ⇒ vagal reflex ⇒ heart↓)  Vagal reflex seems to explain everything.  Well, not everything, obviously.  It doesn't provide any explanation on why my mouse kept moving towards the mice.  Or why I can't sleep.

I feel overall depressed when I don't get enough sleep.  Going to bed now.

miracle

Since I'm not Midori, I can't "ignore" sine or cosine or statistics -- I've been analyzing/proving the effect of caffeine on calculation performance all day, and thought I wouldn't feel like writing today, but a short note:

It was raining last night and I remember it had been the same (or worse) exactly a year ago.  Because that was when I came here to take the entrance exam for my med school.  It was raining like crazy -- umbrellas were useless and it was almost impossible to see where you were walking.

A year ago, I thought I would be happy and relaxed once I got into school.  But.  I realize again that it's a never ending cycle.  You pass a test, a year passes, and you're still facing another test, writing another paper.  Cleaning another room, washing another dish, waking up early in the morning feeling tired.  We keep doing the same thing.  Over and over.

But in a way, that's the "miracle".  Being able to do the same thing.  Not being in a worse state.  Being able to wake up in the morning.  It's a miracle -- if I just take the time to stop and think about it that way.

perfect headmistress

I was reminded today of a story about an American woman who I think died just a couple of years ago (I think her name was Jane something).  She was the headmistress of a very famous girls' school and was known for her discipline.  Years after a divorce, she met a man at a party and his passionate love letter pushed her to enter a relationship with him.  They had a happy time together, but the man (he was a doctor) refused to marry her, and eventually started having an affair with a young nurse, while Jane worked on his book that became a national best-seller.  Soon, Jane was arrested for murdering her lover.

She insisted in court that it had been an accident, and everyone who knew her believed her words.  They said it was impossible for someone like Jane to commit murder.  Jane's reputation and her sophisticated character that showed in her testimony led the whole nation to sympathize with her.  The victim's selfish behavior convinced the jurors that Jane was just a poor woman who was caught in an accident.

However, the prosecutors had one last evidence -- a love letter Jane had written to her lover just before the "accident" occurred.  The letter showed the darkest side of the headmistress no one had ever seen.  She was jealousy itself, torn between hatred and love; she was ugly and nasty, and in the end, she was just an ordinary woman in love.

As I saw her cry in jail when asked about her now dead lover, I was reminded yet again that every human was not just good or bad.  A part of us are good and right but we all have a dark side that we try to hide consciously or unconsciously.  Maybe Jane didn't have to kill anyone if she could convince herself that she didn't have to be perfect in front of everyone.

Either way, we should probably be careful when we recieve passionate love letters but even more careful when sending one!

fire for dessert

Relating to Murakami, the only books I've read thoroughly are Norwegian Wood and the one I mentioned yesterday.  I personally think of the former as the Japanese version of The Catcher in The Rye; NW is obviously a hard core love story and its characters are much more morbid and even more sentimental, but both stories depict the inevitable loss we all experience in the process of growing up.  I can't say exactly *what* we lose (probably because I've already lost them) but I'll probably remember when I read these books again.  They remind me of the struggles I went through and the questions I used to have - how I used to see the world.  Of course you can't always live in the world of sentimentalism (and I'd rather not), but it's sometimes nice to be reminded of things you forget without realizing.  And there are a couple of scenes and conversations that I really like, and I wanted to share one of them:

University student Watanabe is spending one Sunday afternoon at Midori's.  It's a sunny day and they're on the laundry deck after lunch, where they can see a neighborhood house caught in fire.  Watanabe suggests they evacuate, but Midori wants to sing a song and that is what she does.  She sings her terrible self-composed song called "I have nothing", and they drink beer while she talks about when her mother died -- she hadn't felt sad at all.

They feel somewhat "warm and close" after watching the glittering rooftops and the smoke and the red dragonflies together and they want to "preserve that mood in some form" -- they end up having a "soft and gentle kiss", "one not meant to lead beyond itself".  Midori pulls away and tells Watanabe that she's seeing someone.  He admits the same, and "the brief spell of the early autumn afternoon" vanishes.  Watanabe leaves a couple hours later and asks Midori to come for a snack, but she says she has to stay in case the phone rings.

Midori:  I hate waiting at home all day for a call.  When I spend the day alone, I feel as if my flesh is rotting little by little -- rotting and melting until there's nothing left but a green puddle that gets sucked down into the earth.  And all that stays behind are my clothes.  That's how it feels to me, waiting indoors all day.

Watanabe:  I'll keep you company next time you have to wait for a call, as long as lunch is included.

Midori:  Great.  I'll arrange another fire for dessert.

One of the best kissing scenes that I know of.  Then again, I actually didn't like it at all when I read NW the first time.  I was probably around 19-20 and I read the original in Japanese.  I happened to read the English translation two years later, and I didn't think it was too bad (except that too many people die too easily).  I don't know if it was me or the language, but if anyone's wondering which version they should read, I would still recommend the English copy.

cost

僕が僕であって、誰か別の人間でないことは、僕にとってのひとつの重要な財産なのだ。心の受ける生傷は、そのような人間の自立性が世界に向かって支払わなければならない当然の代価である。

The fact that I am I and not anyone else is an important asset to me.  The cuts and bruises my heart recieves are an obvious price that the human independence has to pay to the world.

-- Haruki Murakami

being different

Kids can be cruel.  They have their own way of being cruel.  They want to be different, yet they hate kids who are 'different'.  I had some problems adapting to schools when I came back to Japan.  Before being the "cool kid" who spoke English, I was the "selfish kid" or the "bossy kid" and the "kid who couldn't speak proper Japanese" or the "kid who couldn't run the marathon" or the "kid who couldn't do the long-rope jumping" and dozen other things I couldn't do at gym class.

There's a thing about gym classes in Japanese schools.  There are stuff you *must* be able to do and they give you check lists for your 'friend' to check off when they witness that you can really do it.  But the worst sports they ever make you do is, in my opinion, long rope jumping.  You have to run into the rope (that looks as though it's going to wip you) at the right timing and if you fail, everyone in line groans and you have to feel like you did something as horrible as killing a classmate.

But Japanese teachers just love to make students work on that kind of stuff.  It teaches you how you're supposed to act in a group, how to keep the group in harmony, and how not to be 'different'.

Difference is an amazing concept though.  Without it, we can't be ourselves obviously.  Before babies become themselves, they're part of their mother.  There's no concept of you and me.  But after spending some months outside mommy's stomach, distinction becomes the key.

But I wonder when kids start regarding difference as a bad thing.  A couple of months ago, when I saw a group of six year olds trying to make friends during their first week of school, the last thing I could imagine them doing was bullying someone.  They would all go up and say: "Let's be friends!" And they're friends. It's as simple as that. Who cares if they're different?  They probably don't even know what friends are.

Then we grow up and we have definitions for everything. You have to go to the same school, or you have to have the same hobby, or you have to have the same religion, or you have to survive the same earthquake, or you have to fight in same war on the same side, or you even have to be of the same nationality. To be a 'true' friend, we have to fulfill many requirements. Well, not always, but in a country like Japan, being the same means a lot.

I'm not saying it's boring to be friends with the same kind of people; it's important to know what fits you and what doesn't.  But I sometimes wonder what it was like when I wasn't even conscious of who was white and who was yellow, who was gay and who was straight, who was a friend and who was not; I want to see how I used to see the world and how it used to work back then.

When does difference become a bad thing?  I guess it's not necessarily bad -- it's good if everyone likes it -- but since when do we start forgetting to see things beyond differences?  Maybe I'm just being cynical and sentimental today.

On a side note, I really appreciate it that my parents took a lot of time to practice long-rope jumping and many other things with me *not* so I could be the same as everyone else and fit in, but so that I wouldn't have to feel worthless in the Japanese education curriculum and instead experience the joy of learning. (The good thing about not being able to do something is that you can relish the joy of learning.) They did pretty much everything to protect me, and I think they never tried to convince me that it wasn't wrong to be different. Maybe they knew I had to learn that by myself.

dead end of evolution

Some of the words I've quoted recently have been from a book by a fifty-something year old Haruki Murakami, "What I talk about when I talk about running".

It's about Murakami himself, his life, and what it means, in general, for an imperfect human with limitations, to age.  I'm not exactly a fan of Murakami but I can see why he has worldwide fanatic fans.  He's obviously good with words and has a smart and humorous writing style.  His metaphors can be sharp and nostalgic and fresh.  It didn't change when he wrote about himself and his aging, a topic I guess most people wouldn't necessarily enjoy talking about.

I think as I run, that if my time doesn't get better, there's nothing I can do about it.  I got old, and time takes what it takes.  It's nobody's fault.  Every game has its rule.  It's the same as how the river continues to flow into the ocean.  There is nothing you can do but to accept yourself as part of the natural scene.  It may not be an enjoyable task.  You might not feel glad to find what you find.  But there is nothing we can do.  I have enjoyed my life -- maybe not enough but in my own good time. (38)

1. Life has its order of priority.  You have to decide how you're going to divide and distribute your time an energy.  Without that system, your life loses focus.  (58)

2. The most important thing we learn at school is the truth that we can't learn what is most important at school.  (67)

3. Some processes do not accept change.  If we have to live with it, all we can do is to change ourselves through obsessive repetition and take the process into ourselves as part of our character.  (95)

4. If you quit just because you're "busy", you're never going to do it.  There are always only a few reasons to continue while there are a truckful to quit.  All we can do is to brush up those few reasons with great love.  Find time and brush away.  (102)

5. The essence of running is to burn yourself as effectively as possible within your limitations.  It's the same with life.  (115)

6. We always blame everything on global warming.  We're always in need of a certain villain that we can put the blame on.  (190)

7.  Our shortcomings and defects are countless.  But there must be *some* merits.  We have to survive with what we have because that's all we have.  (209etc.)

8. When you switch from swimming to cycling in a triathlon race, it feels like you're a salamander evolving to become an ostrich.  (226)

9. If there was no pain, no one would run a marathon.  It's the pain -- the process of overcoming the pain -- that gives us a solid realization that we're alive.  (230)

10. If what we're doing is useless and empty, there's nothing we can do.  If what we're doing is as vain as pouring water into a bucket with a hole, the fact that we did put in some kind of effort still remains.  And truly important things can be found only through inefficient tasks.  Empty actions are not stupid actions. (231)

I recognize that I'm only a tiny piece of a large mosaic called nature.  Just like the water of the river, I'm only part of a replaceable natural phenomenon that passes under the bridge heading for the ocean.  (125)

(Nonetheless,) I will run another full marathon in the winter and another triathlon race next summer.  Seasons will change, time will pass, I will grow another year older, and write another novel.  I will take the task that's in front of me and manage it one by one.  I will concentrate on every stride.  And at the same time, I will look at the far away scenery.  Because that is what a long-distance runner does.  I will do what I can and bear what I can to satisfy myself in my own way.  (232)

within three meters

When I feel like doing nothing, I always think the only way to find a way through the tunnel is to keep moving, even if I'm slower than a turtle.  The best way to become a turtle is to look at the small picture.  The big picture is important of course, but the small picture can be as helpful too -- just like what Haruki Murakami says in his book "What I talk about when I talk about running".  He's in the middle of a 100km marathon and this is what he thinks:

I tried to make my world as small and limitted as possible.  What I see is only three meters ahead.  I don't know what exists beyond.  My current world is within that three meters.  There is no need to think beyond what is there.  The sky, the wind, the grass, the cows that eat the grass, the spectators, the cheers, the lake, the stories, the truth, the past, the memories, all are irrelevant to me.  To move my feet to the spot that is three meters away -- that is my small raison d'etre as a human, or rather, as a machine.

japanese idols

Japanese idols have general elections.
It's broad casted on TV like a real election.
Analysed and commented by famous scholars and serious newscasters.

 

Don't ask me why.
Oh, but it's a big deal because we have to decide who we want in the center when we see their pretty performances.

Does anyone else think AKB48 sounds like a name of some kind of gene?

being neutral

no expectations = no disappointments = less stress, more surprises
= happy life
 

self-respect

I'm kind of unhappy today.  It's really ironic because I've been writing about happiness so diligently for the past couple of days.

My mom is a bit 潔癖 by which I mean she has a low level of tolerance and can be a bit judgemental -- just like the floor she cleans every day, everything has to be 'clean' to make her happy.  I personally think she was able to stay that way because she has, in a way, always been protected.  Life never forced her to change.

Now I don't care too much about my floor, but I do realize her moral intolerance inside of me sometimes.  Especially when I regard something as disrespect.  It's almost always better if you have a high level of tolerance because people are not going to change.  If you feel unhappy, that's your problem; not theirs.  High tolerance only becomes a problem when you accept everything and you end up finding yourself treated like a rug.

I think that's what my parents mean -- that I shouldn't forget to respect myself, and that I should remember I always deserve the best.  Yes, the best.  But what is the best in the first place?

If I were to live by my mother's standards (not that I intend to do so anyway), I think I'm going to end up pretty unhappy for the sake of my self-respect.  High tolerence and low expectations are the keys to finding happiness.

But I guess it's all about balance.  Life is complicated.

prof and porn

I might be too naive or something but is it only me who finds it uncomfortable talking about sex and porn with a professor?  I mean, I don't think it's wrong at all to talk about sex, but at the same time, I think there are more appropriate topics when a student talks with a prof even outside school.

But curious S (I had dinner yesterday with her and a professor; S is ten years older than me btw) suddenly asked if it was okay for a brilliant doctor who could save 10,000 lives to have an affair in return.  I didn't get what was in return of what.  But that conversation expanded and expanded and led to the prof talking about when he went to a conference in Austria where he watched porn at the hotel.  He was amazed with the Austrian "culture" of "strong women who turned aggressive towards the end".  Sara seemed to enjoy it a lot but I wanted to go home.  (It was pretty ironic how the next topic was how to react when you didn't find funny what the other person found funny.  Oh, but was it me who brought it up?)

Don't get me wrong; I usually like the prof and we did have some interesting conversations too.  Like the three principles of life,
1. 精神を壊すほど大したことは、人生においてほとんどない　There are very few things that are worth sacrificing our mental health for.
2. 自分は大したことのある人間だとは思わない方がいい　Don't expect too much of yourself -- always keep in mind there's little we can do
3. 放り投げる勇気が大事　Be brave enough to give up

We also talked about even more serious stuff like how when a doctor faces a patient, it's only one body out of a hundred other for him, while it's very different for the patient -- it's the only body he has.  If the doctor makes a mistake, he has another chance, but the patient?

I'm not saying I *only* enjoy talking about life principles and answer-less philosophical questions; I don't go around forcing my friends a debate on "how to be happy".  I enjoy meaningless conversations.  And I probably can enjoy talking about sex.  But with certain kind of people.  Definitely not my professor!

dear happiness

I'm allowed to feel unhappy, aren't I?



幸せでならなくてはならないことほど辛いことはない

accepting

One of my readers told me yesterday that happiness was something that existed inside of you regardless of what happened externally, and I'm interested in that kind of stable happiness she described.

Which doesn't necessarily mean I was thinking about it when I went to bed last night, but this morning, I suddenly woke up at 6:41 AM with a single thought.  (Except that it wasn't the thought that woke me up -- there's a bus station right in front of my apartment building and the bus arrives every morning announcing incredibly loudly where it's headed).

I think everything boils down to being able to accept that everything doesn't have to be perfect.  External events influence how you feel (unless you're a Zen monk), but if you could accept imperfection (like a Zen monk), you would probably be influenced less.

My father often tells me 一喜一憂してもしょうがない (it's useless to 'ikki-ichiyu' = fluctuate between hope and despair -- which translates as stop sweating the small stuff or things that seem big).  "Look at the big picture."

I used to imagine happiness as a perfect circle.  But maybe it doesn't have to be.  Happiness, in fact, might be a distorted shape.  Or maybe happiness comes when you learn to see beyond the bumps and dents and see it as a perfect circle.  Like when you see the moon.

Either way, it probably all depends on me.

illusion

The beer was good.  But it wasn't as good as what I had ardently imagined as I ran (the marathon).



There is nothing as beautiful as an illusion of a man who has lost his sanity.

-- Haruki Murakami

pseudo-experiences

We're not immortal.  We can't transport ourselves through time.  There's a limit to what we can experience.  I used to think fiction did the trick to help us with that sad reality.  By reading a novel and jumping into the imaginary world, we can experience anything.

But I realized at some point that fiction was fiction.  It can grab our hearts and make us cry but still, when I face the vividness of reality, I think it's almost always better than fiction.  Maybe it's because I haven't read fiction in a long time.  But even when I did, I was pretty lazy.  I never read Dostoevsky or Goethe or Hemingway; I only read works of writers who most likely had read their works.  And because I was not only lazy but also arrogant, I believed that you didn't necessarily have to read Hemingway to get a Hemingway-ish insight.  After all, he's everywhere.  I understood enough about what he had to say by reading other people's works that were easier to read.  Sort of like the food chain: cows eat corn, we eat cows, and the corn as a result becomes part of our body.  Or maybe like having soup with some beef extract instead of beef itself.

Which I now understand are two very different things.  The soup can always be just water without no beef extract whatsoever.  And of course the chewing is what counts if you want to grow your brain muscle.  No matter how many times I come across the transformed version of the world's greatest works, it will never be equal to reading the original work, just like eating cow is different from eating corn.  What's worse, when you're at the top of the food chain, the foods you eat can be densely polluted.  Something that was very thin at the bottom of the pyramid can be condensed at the top.

But after all, I still think it's a very efficient way of getting nutrients.  I am so lazy!

On a side note, there might come a day when 'fiction' could become 'reality' in our minds.  Like I've probably written before, everything happens in our brain.  I hear that there is a research going on that would enable people to experience a 100 year life in a couple of weeks.  So maybe when you're diagnosed with an incurable disease that would kill you in a month, you could experience the rest of your life in your head before you die.  And maybe we could all have a happy ending.  Doesn't sound bad, does it?

independence

It hasn't been that long since I started this blog, but there are certain things I've written about over and over again.  I sometimes simply forget what I wrote.  And sometimes, it might be something I simply want to remind myself.  Either way, one of those topics is happiness and independence:

I think I quoted something like this before --

The best way to embrace loneliness is to be independent.  Being independent means knowing how to trust yourself.  To trust yourself, you have to spend some time alone, live your own life, prove yourself that you can do it.  Go through some pain.  Make some effort.  Shed some tears.  Pour some sweat.  Find what's really valuable to you.  Accept yourself.  Then you realize you're not lonely; you're just alone.

The other day, I saw a blind and deaf man being featured on a news program and thought: *this* is what you call 'alone'.  He was born deaf and had lost his sight when he was 31.  His father and brother had supported him but both were now dead.  He was 51.  He hadn't left his house in decades, and when he was interviewed, his vocabulary was too limited he had difficulty expressing his feelings.  He used to write on hands to communicate with his family but since they only had minimum communication, his vocabulary had shrunk.  He didn't even know the date.  "How did he manage to live in this loneliness?  Only he knows but he has no way to tell."

It struck me hard when they said he had forgotten his words.  Some people can still make music in their head after they become deaf.  Some people can still see the blue sky after they become blind.  I thought everything existed in the brain -- that imagination could take you anywhere.  I knew nothing might be as vivid as reality, but it hardly occurred to me that our world in our brain could shrink and lose its colors when we lost contact with the outside world.

The news program ended with some hope, featuring a young woman who was also deaf and blind but with support, had started to work as a teacher.  She said she was happy now, that she had so many great encounters through her disease.  She appreciated the support and seemed at peace.  Her genuine smile made me feel slightly ashamed.  It shouldn't cost us light and sound to find happiness.

appreciating unhappiness?

I've never read Faust but I happened to read a passage written by someone who has read it.  (Which reminds me that you don't necessarily have to read Hemingway to get a Hemingway-ish insight -- because he's everywhere.  It sounds lazy and arrogant, but it's probably sort of like having soup with some beef extract instead of beef itself.  ...Which are, after all, two very different things.  And the chewing is what counts if I want to grow my brain muscle.  But I guess it's still an efficient way of getting nutrients as long as my soup isn't water?)

Anyway, according to her, Faust is great in that he puts in a lot of effort to learn and get what he wants, but lacks a sense of appreciation.  She was against his arrogant idea that anything could be achieved through effort.  "I think Faust should appreciate who he is and what he has before desiring to improve himself and his life."  (You can read the original post here)

She's absolutely right.  But I think it's very difficult to be happy with what you have (or who you are) AND desire to improve yourself at the same time.  At least I've found it very difficult.  It's this sense of unsatisfaction or frustration that motivates me.  A lot of energy is required to progress, and I kind of believe that the most negative feelings can be the most powerful drive.  I've read somewhere that in many cases, it's the fear of failure rather than the image of success that makes humans work.

Personally, I don't think I'll ever write if I were completely full of happiness.  I enjoy writing by nature, but it's also similar to masturbation, if that doesn't sound too weird.  There are some needs inside of me that need to be met, and I write to fill in that little hole.  Though it might sound kind of sad and maybe narsicistic when I write it down like this.

There's a story of a fisherman in a tiny island who would wander around from bar to bar talking about how he had this hole in his heart. He said he couldn't sleep -- he would just lie there in bed because of this hole. The community got together and found the guy a log. The guy had never carved a thing before in his life and it took him five years but he carved a totem pole.  He needed to make it just so he could sleep.

Going back to Faust and his idea that anything can be achieved through effort, I know you can't achieve everything, but throughout my life so far, I've *almost* always had something on my mind that I really wanted, and that has been my locomotive.  The existence of an unaccomplished goal does inevitably make me unsatisfied to some extent (almost by definition), and by the time (or shortly after) I get what I want, I have a new goal in mind that sends me back to where I was, but that, in a sense, is what makes me who I am.

I've started to realize I have to learn to be happy not when I actually reach my goal but also when I'm still on my way, because it's an infinite cycle.  To me, however, that sort of means accepting the fact that I am, in fact, unhappy -- that I don't have to be completely happy.  And I hope that I can learn to appreciate things I'm not exactly happy with.  But am I contradicting myself again?

soccer

Now that we're done with pathology, we're on to pharmacology, but suddenly, our timetable only consists of two classes in the morning (at least this week).  Which means we're required to study on our own in the afternoon.  And that was exactly what I was planning to do yesterday when these guys suddenly decided they were coming over to my place to watch a soccer game.  It really made no sense at all, because 1. I don't watch soccer, 2. I never said I wanted to watch a game with them, 3. I wasn't planning to watch yesterday's game.  That was how much I was NOT interested in yesterday's Japan vs. Australia.  Halfway through the game, I asked if anyone thought it was a waste of time.

But now that the game is over, I'm glad they came to indirectly force me to watch it, because it ended up to be one of the best soccer games I've ever seen.  We all thought it was going to end 0-0 but Australia scored when there was less than ten minutes left for Japan to score back, and guess what happened -- Japan got a PK.  We all cried with joy when this 'monkey' -- Honda -- scored.

And we found out later on the news that some people were more violent when they celebrated -- some climbed on taxis while some dived into rivers.  It was absurd, but as I saw all these people in excitement, I thought it was a pretty amazing phenomenon.  So many people were happy about the same thing at the same time.  I don't think the Japanese are patriotic at all, and I don't necessarily value patriotism anyway, but I thought it was nice to see the people become as one.

together but lonely?

先ほど友人と昼食をとりながら話していたこと。
1人でいて寂しいのと、2人でいても寂しいのと、どちらがマシか。

私の一回り上である友人は、一緒にいて寂しい思いをする人とは付き合いたくないと言っていたが、私自身は、2人でいても寂しいのが普通なのではないかと思う。いくら愛し合っていても、違う人間である以上、すべてを分かち合うのは無理だし、やっぱり、何度伝えようとしても理解してもらえないことや、何度理解しようとしても理解できないことは、きっとあると思うのだ。

離婚の危機に瀕するカップルを数組見てきて思うのは、コミュニケーション不足はどこかで必ず関係に亀裂を作るということだ。最近、本格的に離婚を考え始めた友人夫妻は、話し合いをするたびに、なぜか熱海に行く。家だろうと熱海だろうと、話す人間が変わらなければ、何も変わらないということに気づいていないのだとすれば、悲しいような気もするが、日常の生活から離れてお互いのことだけを考えられる環境の中で話し合いをすることが重要だという考えもあるのだろう。

でも一方で、いくら話し合ってもどうしようもないこともある。相手が恐ろしく鈍感な場合とか。私の周りには、そういう人があまりいないので、鈍感というと、ある友人とのとある夕食を思い出してしまう。私が、職なし金なし彼氏なしの三重苦に直面していた時に（といっても、夢を応援してくれている両親がいたので苦ではなかったのだが）、彼女は、自分の恋人が非常に愛情深い人間である上に非常に成功した画家であることをひとしきり自慢した後に、「で、結婚したら苗字が変わっちゃうでしょ？私、それが今最大の悩みなの」と言い放った。

「確かに、中田が田中になるのって、大変だよね」そう言いながら、私は、悩みとは本当に人それぞれなのだと痛感した。私が自分の三重苦を深刻に考えている以上に彼女は中田から田中に姓が変わることを深刻に思っていたのかもしれないのだ。それは客観的には理解できることだったが、彼女の悩みは私には到底理解しがたいものだったし、彼女にとっては私の悩みこそが意味不明だったかもしれない。

いずれにしても、そんなわけで、自分の悩みを分かってもらおうとか、そんな大それた期待を抱いているうちは、2人でいても寂しい思いをするのは目に見えている。寂しくなりたくないなら、経済的にも精神的にも自立した人間になることだ、とつくづく思う。寄り掛かろうと思うから、壁が崩れると悲しいし、悔しい。裏切られたくなければ、最初から自分の足で立つことだけを考えればいいのだ。厳しいけれど、長い目で見れば、それが自分を救う唯一にして一番の方法だと思う。



During lunch, I had a conversation with my friend about which was better:
1. Being alone and lonely
2. Being together (with someone) and still being lonely

My friend said she didn't want to date anyone that made her feel lonely, but I think we're bound to feel lonely even when we're with someone.  As long as we're different humans, we won't be able to understand each other completely, no matter how hard we try.

Communication problems would of course lead to cracks in a relationship (I think that's why my friend who is thinking of a getting a divorce goes on a vacation with her husband to have a 'meaningful conversation' every time something comes up between them -- it's pretty ironic if they still haven't realized it's not the place but the people and the content of the conversation that matter) but sometimes it's not a matter of communication.

Like when I was facing my 'down' period in life (with no job, no money, no boyfriend) -- a friend told me how happy she was with her own boyfriend and nailed it with "you see, I'm going to have to change my last name when we get married.  That's the greatest concern for me at the moment."

"Yeah, it must be a great challenge to change your name from Nakata to Tanaka."  I nodded, and thought: concerns indeed depend on the person.  She might've been seriously concerned about her last name much much more than I was about my no-nothing state.  That was easy to understand from an objective point of view, but I had no way to understand her concerns and she probably didn't understand mine.  No communication would've quite bridged the gap.

Either way, while we're expecting someone or our significant other to 'understand' our worries and concerns, we're bound to feel lonely.  That's why I think it's important to be independent financially and mentally.  We get hurt and get angry when the wall collapses because we're looking for something to lean on.  If we don't want to feel betrayed, we might as well start thinking about standing on our own feet. It's not easy, but in the long run, I think it's the only yet best way to save ourselves.

mistakes

人は間違いを犯す。

間違えた本人が間違いを過去とするなら、

私たちもそうすべきである。
 

history

When I talked about the comfort-women-incident with a friend today,  I insisted that Hashimoto wasn't wrong for saying comfort women were 'necessary', that there were things in society that were wrong but necessary, to which my friend told me that I was self-contradicting.  "Being necessary, by definition, means it does more good than harm, which means it's relatively right."

I was still not quite convinced until the conversation moved on to what America did to Japan -- the two atomic bombings.  When he said they might've been 'necessary', I belatedly understood that it actually did sound like justifying what was done.  Being necessary and being right are slightly different things, but it's the same statement for emotional victims.

According to my friend, around the time of WWII, Japan had one foot in the feudal world and one foot in the modern world (we modernized rapidly and our morality hadn't caught up with our technology).  We still had bushido as our backbone, and although it never taught us to disrespect others and be cruel, Japanese soldiers misbehaved in colonies in the way Europeans did several hundred years ago.  Prostitution and war went hand in hand not only in Japan, but the way Japan did it was crueler than any other country.  (In fact, it was bad to the extent that when Japan finally surrendered, we prepared a 'comfort house' for American soldiers because we didn't want them to 'misbehave'.)  The fact that comfort women had been 'necessary' according to the Japanese mindset 'at that time' does not make what Japan did any less cruel.

Talking of moral relativity and bushido, one out of five Okinawans died when America invaded Okinawa, and many of them killed themselves because they were convinced that death with dignity valued more than life with shame.  This sense of value stems from bushido, but it does sound pretty extreme according to today's sense of value (in which nothing weighs more than life), and this was what apparently frightened the Americans and made them think it was 'necessary' to drop some atomic bombs.  Japan had been debating of surrendering after the first bomb, but the fact that Japan still hadn't surrendered upsetted the Americans.  The second bomb may have not been necessary but it was reasonable for them to think it was.  And if they hadn't dropped it, Japan may have fought till the last man died.

Now I remember how I felt shocked and angry when I learned in elementary school what America had done, but I don't have any raw feelings about it now.  I have very good Americans friends, and I never think about the atomic bomb their grandfathers dropped.  History is a story of humans doing wrong things to humans.  We shouldn't forget it but we should learn to forgive and move on.  It's a waste of energy to be angry, and if we were to like/dislike someone because of her native country's doings, I think it's a sad way to divide the world.

On a side note, my friend (Canadian) knew a lot more than me about what happened in Japan during WWII.  One of the things he pointed out was that it was very illogical for us to be so upset about the atomic bomb and not care quite as much about the Tokyo air raid.  200,000 to 80,000 people were killed in the air raid (it was initially underestimated because America didn't want to make it seem like what they did was so cruel while Japan didn't want to admit America was capable of such killing), which means the atomic bomb just did in two seconds what it would take fire-bombing 12 hours -- the damage was the same.

I don't want it to sound like an excuse but in Japanese schools, modern history is taught in a rush because we don't have enough time by the time we get there.  Teachers take too much time doing the Jomon era when humans in Japan used to spend their days fishing peacefully.  My friend said it might be on purpose.  "They don't want to teach history that makes Japan look bad."  Maybe he's right.

The reason Kyoto wasn't bombed by the way, was because one of the American officers who were deciding where they should bomb had visited Kyoto thrity years before on his honeymoon and thought it would be a tragedy for all mankind if Kyoto and its art were destroyed.  It really is the experience of individuals that change history.

controlling women

A foreign friend once told me that Japanese women were notorious for being controlling.  In the beginning, we're quiet and flexible and we don't interfere, but once we start dating, we become controlling.  "It's bizzare."  He said it probably had something to do with jealousy and insecurity but that it must be something cultural too.

It reminded me of how Japanese women were portrayed in the past.  They were called Yamato Nadeshiko, and just like the Nadeshiko flower, they were modest and reserved, but at the same time, had a strong mentality and will power to support their husband with great respect and patience.

There's still an expression that people use when praising the support of one's wife: 内助の功 (naijo no ko = (accomplishment of) one's wife's help).  People use it like this:
"I got promoted the other day."
"Congrats!  That's naijo no ko."

We're now moving toward gender equality and the concept of Yamato Nadeshiko is kind of out-of-date, but I wonder if this has anything to do with the controlling demeanor of Japanese women.



I mean, being Yamato Nadeshiko can be a double-edged sword.  If you're really happy sacrificing your life to support your husband, and if your husband is successful, it's great.

I think the definition of YN is being truly happy and proud being solely on the supporting side.

But when you're constantly judged by your husband's status, you most likely start wishing he did better.  And that's where the controlling starts.  You become pushy because you've been sacrificing so much for this man, and it's hard to be happy supporting an unsuccessful man.

Nowadays, I think the majority of Japanese women do not seek their "dreams" and "goals" and "futures" in their men; they have their own dream and goals to accomplish, but maybe the well-hidden controlling character of YN might be remaining in the Japanese culture.

Then again, I think real YN were never controlling (regardless of their husbands' situation).  They were as patient as the beauty of the flower they were named after.

On a side note, I did pass pathology.  Only 11 people did though.  I don't think I did that well and I feel almost guilty for passing...