what i have

大切なのは、私が持っているものであって、失ったものではない
今あるものを大切に
What's important is what you have and not what you have lost.
Cherish what you have now.

-Mami Sato （佐藤真海）


When Haruki Murakami was sixteen, he once observed his whole naked body in the mirror at home when everybody else was out.  He listed up his own body parts he thought were worse than other people.  He counted up till 27 and gave up because he knew it was going to be a neverending list, especially if he included unphysical traits too.

"Sixteen is a very troublesome age," he says.  "You notice little things and dwell on them.  You can't figure where you stand.  The smallest things can make you proud of yourself or otherwise make you feel ashamed.  As you get older though, you learn to pick up what is there to pick up, and let go of what is there to let go."

"It's this realization or resignation -- we all have countless shortcomings but we also must have at least some good qualities.  We have to cope and survive with what we do have."


When I was around sixteen, I think I just feared being ordinary.  I needed to find some kind of identity, and being "different" was the easiest way to be "myself".  But I had no special talent that I could be confident of.  Nor did I have enough courage for a crazy adventure.  So I became a good student with the best grades.  Just best in my school.  I used to live in a small world with big dreams.

Exactly ten years have passed, and where am I now?  I still have dreams, big and small -- I have to become a doctor for one thing -- but I also want to be happy with what I already have.  I want to love myself for not what I hope to achieve in the future, but for what I already am.

A couple days ago when I was packing my suitcase at home, I felt a bit depressed that I had to face a test in two days.  But when I glanced at my packed suitcase a while later and saw a stethoscope and a textbook on immunology lying there (like they were the most natural things to be in a suitcase), I suddenly realized for a split second that this was the future I had dreamed of two years ago when I decided to go to university all over again to become a doctor.  There I was, standing in the future I had wished to be at.  What more could I ask for?