It's been such a long time since my last entry that it feels a bit strange making time to sit down in front of the screen and sort out my thoughts... A quick update would be that I'm now specializing in Emergency Medicine after finishing my two years of basic training. I entered my fourth decade of life as I experienced failed relationships that left me slightly more unencouraged and less confident each time, and perhaps making me all the more persistent to pass the US licensing exam to confirm that efforts really did matter, and to regain control in my life again. I carried around a thick textbook whose heavy weight eventually became a reminder of how much the small challenge meant to me. It was February 2020 by the time I literally got it off my shoulders, and the world had entered the age of the Corona pandemic which ended up exposing various weaknesses and strengths of our societies.
My experience in EM so far has been closer to urgent care, so I haven't had to deal with moral dilemmas of choosing one life over another. Up till now the closest I've gotten to the virus have been when a patient comes in with a totally different complaint and unexpectedly has pneumonia; his condition would sometimes unexpectedly worsen to the point where he has to be intubated and sent to another hospital with a CV line, by an ambulance that "kind of" quarantines the patient under a plastic tent that has an opening around the patient's head so that the doctor can check on him while the car drives to an available hospital that's forty to sixty minutes away...
But then while I worked through those shifts and rewrote my CV in the hopes of maybe applying for a new hospital, my uncle a couple prefectures away had a brain hemorrhage, Haruma Miura committed suicide, and two physicians got arrested assisting the death of a woman suffering from ALS - the latter two happening this month and urging me to come back here to write this entry.
Earlier this month, I had received a call early in the morning from a wife of a patient who was apparently experiencing symptoms that sounded like paralysis. After checking his chart and finding out he lived more than an hour away from our hospital, I suggested they call an ambulance and go to a nearby hospital, which they did - except that the doctors found nothing new on the MRI. He was sent back home, only to start seizing thirty minutes later, which is what I found out when I got another call from the wife around five pm, asking what to do. I suggested another ambulance call, and this time, the EMS decided it wasn't a stroke, and came all the way to our hospital where he'd had regular visits for other conditions. He was unconscious in a decerebrate state by the time he arrived.
The neurologist who came down to the ER happened to be one of my attendings during my neurology rotation three years prior, with whom I had worked on a case study of a patient who died of a rupture of dolicoectasia, a vascular malformation. It turned out to be a very interesting coincidence, as the ER patient happened to have the same vascular malformation, which caused a brainstem infarction, and ended up with locked in syndrome.
When I visited the patient a week later, communication was minimal as the only parts of the body he could move were his eyes, eyelids, and vocal chords. His tongue and mouth movement were not enough to pronounce words. He would blink every time the answer to my question was "yes", and would cry uncontrollably when I mentioned the words "wife" and "family". My former neurology attending told me that the patient had told his wife beforehand that he did not want any life prolonging measures to be taken if this kind of situation occurred. "It's really heartbreaking; he can't even commit suicide," the neurologist said, as we headed back to each of our departments. I didn't ask if he had actually had a talk with the patient to find out if that was what he truly wanted at that point.
I don't remember what the case was for the young protagonist diagnosed with ALS in the Japanese TV series, "The Time I was Here". I probably wouldn't have even recalled the series had the actor, Haruma Miura, not died the other day, alone in an apartment building only a few minutes away from the hospital I work at. In spite of the fact that I wasn't particularly a fan of his, the news evoked sadness as if an old classmate had committed suicide. I was shocked, and even a bit hurt. I woke up in the dark, thinking of his unbearable loneliness; imagined him trembling as he hung himself in the same darkness. Some people might say it was wrong; I think he may have focused too much on himself while he stayed home during quarantine, he may have saved himself with a tiny change of perspective, but who are we to judge his judgement? He was the only one who could live his life - success, failure, loneliness and all. It was his life, and he'd had the right to end it on his own terms.
Which takes me back to the issue of euthanasia. Marieke Vervoort, the Belgian athlete who ended her life last year said she may have committed suicide had she not had the option of euthanasia. The knowledge that she could end it all gave her mind a sense of peace and helped her live up to her limits despite her intolerable pain.
ALS doesn't cause physical pain like what Vervoort went through but the psychological pain is unmeasurable, as each patient has different scales: some people decide to live with a ventilator; needing help from other people and machines may not necessarily deprive them of their dignity -- perhaps they're very good at redefining their identity. But to some people, not being able to do things on their own feels like losing a big part of themselves.
I still haven't had the chance to meet my uncle after his stroke, but my grandmother gave us a call telling us her son has been rejecting rehabilitation; he still has a long way until he accepts his new self, if he ever will... The biggest problem I find in the recent assisted death in Japan is not exactly that the woman chose euthanasia but that the two doctors (one of which wasn't even a doctor) didn't follow the proper steps in evaluating her will. There seemed to be much more room for discussion, and she also could've changed her mind at the very last moment, but there is no way to confirm at this point.
Regarding my own life, I don't think I was terribly happy during the past three years. After spending a particularly depressing time last year both career-wise and relationship-wise, one thing I've been trying to remind myself lately is not to be too greedy. It's better for my mental health not to chase after chances I don't get, people who walk away, things in the past I was too young to see the true values of. There will always be another chance, another person that would come to me, maybe not now, and maybe not in the form I expect, but I must believe there will be a better future when I'm not quite happy with my current situation. Because good things take time.
The following passage is from an article I came across when I ended my last relationship ("After the Beginning, depression or disappointment"): "There's nothing like thinking that you have failed at love to sharpen your knowledge that life is uncertain and the clock is relentlessly ticking. One tends to ask oneself, if this relationship won't work, will I ever find one that does? Disappointment measures the passing of time as a fall. It is one of our harsh reminders of solitude and aging and mortality."
The writer continues: "Here's where the difference between depression and disappointment becomes crucial. Faced with the prospect of loss, the depressed bypasses disappointment and rushes to the end of the story, even before the story begins. All is failure, decay, rejection. When spring begins, the depressive is already dreading the leaves turning brown and falling off the trees... ...it's a way of saying this imperfect difficult world is not good enough for me. Give me paradise or give me death... ...depression makes the world utterly gray and uninteresting. Then you can tell yourself, what's the use of trying?"
"The disappointed person lingers, however painfully, in the middle of the story, even though paradise has slipped through his fingers. Disappointment keeps you connected to life as it continues to unfold and places an important choice in front of you... ...Neither a utopian outcome nor easy success nor bliss in love is just around the corner. Life is more difficult than you thought. The question is, what next? Are you going to take on the vital forces of life, despite limitations and imperfections, or pull the covers over your head as an exit strategy? ...with disappointment, the plot is still taking shape, even though there may be hard work to do."
A couple weeks ago I stumbled upon a book review on amazon while I sat at the hair dresser for the first time in eight months. It was the most popular review on a Japanese best seller book about a half Asian half Caucasian teenager boy dealing with bullying, learning to accept others and himself, and finding hope despite all the problems we face, written by the boy's Japanese mother. The review was partly about the reviewer's perspective, how she had decided to bring her own half Asian half Caucasian son to Japan instead of raising him in the UK because she didn't want her son to experience racial discrimination; "It's great to think about racism and fight against it, but what kind of parent would want her child to actually experience it first hand in order to overcome it?" She wrote.
This remark definitely has a point; I'd want to protect my future child the best I could. But at the same time, I don't think I'd like to live my life to end it without a single bruise or a cut. When my life comes to an ending, I'd like to be proud of myself despite the numerous ugly wounds (--some I may never recover from); I'd like to be able to love the world as it is despite the numerous suffering it imposed on me. That, I feel would bring a deeper, greater satisfaction, compared to what one would experience from a life lived in a happy bubble. Death may indeed feel like a reward when one reaches that kind of deep love despite the suffering or even because of it; that emotion would connect one to the world and enable one to become truly part of it even in the face of, or after one's death -- the deceased will go on in the form of a greater entity, that is, the world he truly loved.
So I guess my motto has slightly changed from the time I started this blog -- until the day comes, I'll try to dance like nobody's watching, love like I've never been hurt, sing like nobody's listening, and live accepting it's not always heaven on earth but still believing it deserves all my love.
2020年7月25日土曜日
2017年6月15日木曜日
update
I've been away for a long time so I don't know if there is anyone still reading this blog, but in case anyone's wondering, I wanted to let you know that I've graduated med school and have become a doctor. I've started working at a hospital in Tokyo, and it's been a great experience.
I haven't been writing at all these days; I actually don't feel the urge anymore. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know... I still feel like some day I might come back with stories I want to share, but for now, I'm busy living each day, getting used to being a doctor, and finding out what life actually is! Now that I'm finally working and interacting with people, all the things I read in books and all the thoughts I used to have seem to fade in color.
I think my sense of value has changed a bit. I used to wonder what it would feel like to actually become a doctor and work day and night. I used to worry about becoming one of those "disposable" doctors -- that if I quit, someone else would replace me easily. It's true, especially since I'm still a useless resident. But it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. In short, I think I've finally accepted the obvious fact that I'm not special. If I meet a patient though, if I meet someone I can relate to, someone I can help, that encounter IS special, and nothing can replace that one encounter.
When you're really sick, you can't really focus on anything. When you have a strained back, all you can think of is the pain in your back; if you have a painful hemmoroid, your butt hole becomes the center of your world; you forget about your favorite book, how to appreciate your favorite painting, your favorite piece of music, and you can't focus on all the things that make you you. But being a (good) doctor would enable me to bring you back to being a human, to being yourself again, and I think that's a huge honor. I'd always dreamed of writing someone's favorite book, but I feel like it doesn't really matter anymore. For now, I'm really happy with what I have.
I haven't been writing at all these days; I actually don't feel the urge anymore. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know... I still feel like some day I might come back with stories I want to share, but for now, I'm busy living each day, getting used to being a doctor, and finding out what life actually is! Now that I'm finally working and interacting with people, all the things I read in books and all the thoughts I used to have seem to fade in color.
I think my sense of value has changed a bit. I used to wonder what it would feel like to actually become a doctor and work day and night. I used to worry about becoming one of those "disposable" doctors -- that if I quit, someone else would replace me easily. It's true, especially since I'm still a useless resident. But it doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. In short, I think I've finally accepted the obvious fact that I'm not special. If I meet a patient though, if I meet someone I can relate to, someone I can help, that encounter IS special, and nothing can replace that one encounter.
When you're really sick, you can't really focus on anything. When you have a strained back, all you can think of is the pain in your back; if you have a painful hemmoroid, your butt hole becomes the center of your world; you forget about your favorite book, how to appreciate your favorite painting, your favorite piece of music, and you can't focus on all the things that make you you. But being a (good) doctor would enable me to bring you back to being a human, to being yourself again, and I think that's a huge honor. I'd always dreamed of writing someone's favorite book, but I feel like it doesn't really matter anymore. For now, I'm really happy with what I have.
2015年9月12日土曜日
every life
Two weeks ago, we visited a hospital far in the mountains where they took care of children who were mentally and physically handicapped severely. It was sad to read their charts, how some of them ended up there -- some parents didn't want to take care of them anymore because their handicap was too much to handle, while others hadn't wanted them in the first place, abusing them until they had to be hospitalized.
But what also shocked me was when I saw full grown adults who weren't all that different from the children -- just a bit larger in size. With medicine's advancement, the severely handicapped children can now grow up and live on to become adults. It must be something to be celebrated. But to be totally honest, I felt this unfathomable sadness when I saw the adults lying side by side on the futons, hardly able to move, not being able to say one word. I was embarrassed to feel that way, because who was I to decide that they were unhappy or that they couldn't even tell if they were happy or not?
Back in the university hospital, the doctors were discussing what they should do about a two year old boy with cerebral palsy whose mother had left the hospital without notice. The boy was so small, soundly asleep in the hospital's large bed, and I thought about the adults I saw in the hospital in the mountains, the future versions of the little boy. Of course, the doctors had done their best to save him, and were still trying to find the best place for him to live.
Because every life is worth living. Every life.
But what also shocked me was when I saw full grown adults who weren't all that different from the children -- just a bit larger in size. With medicine's advancement, the severely handicapped children can now grow up and live on to become adults. It must be something to be celebrated. But to be totally honest, I felt this unfathomable sadness when I saw the adults lying side by side on the futons, hardly able to move, not being able to say one word. I was embarrassed to feel that way, because who was I to decide that they were unhappy or that they couldn't even tell if they were happy or not?
Back in the university hospital, the doctors were discussing what they should do about a two year old boy with cerebral palsy whose mother had left the hospital without notice. The boy was so small, soundly asleep in the hospital's large bed, and I thought about the adults I saw in the hospital in the mountains, the future versions of the little boy. Of course, the doctors had done their best to save him, and were still trying to find the best place for him to live.
Because every life is worth living. Every life.
2015年8月22日土曜日
sacrifice
-- Sacrifice is the spirit of love
Summer vacation has almost come to an end, and as I traveled back, I finished reading 犠牲(sacrifice) written by Kunio Yanagida (published the same year Into the Wild was). It's an essay about his son, Yojiro, who committed suicide at the age of 25 after suffering metal illness for more than a decade. One of his problems being anthropophobia, it was difficult for him to get a job, and thus he despaired that he had nothing he could give to society.
At the same time, he was deeply moved by one of Tarkovsky's films, Sacrifice, which expresses the belief that the reason we can live today in peace is due to "the sacrifice of a nameless person who lives somewhere under the broad blue sky". When Yanagida finds his son brain dead, he agrees to donate his kidneys as a token of Yojiro's existence, thinking that this kind of 'sacrifice' was what he had always wanted.
One of the things Yojiro feared most was oblivion -- the fact that when one dies, even the fact that he lived and suffered will be forgotten and deleted from history. A character from a book I read last summer states the exact same thing, to which the protagonist retorts that he should get over the fear, because "there was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after". Her point is that even if some people remember you after your death, they too are going to die, and in the end, there will be no one remaining to remember you anyway. This logic applies even to the world's most famous person, because at some point, the human species will extinct, and the planet will collapse.
I guess it's a decent argument, but obviously, the truth that everyone dies doesn't really liberate you from the fear of death. Logically, I understand that everything is going to disappear one day, that it's nonsense to dwell on whether or not you will survive death for what amounts to less than a fraction of a second in geological time. But emotionally, I still fear the possibility of dying leaving nothing behind. I want to give my life some kind of meaning, and I think a lot of people do, including my mother.
To tell the truth, I'm a terrible daughter -- deep down in my heart, I have not always respected her. I've told her more than once that I will never live a life like hers, and that I was 'different'. Apart from the years she spent working as a language teacher, she has worked as a full time housewife, and since she started seeing her 60th birthday coming around the corner, she started asking herself (and her family) the meaning of her own life. She suddenly realized she had no personal accomplishments, and began questioning the value and meaning of her 'self-sacrifice'.
Now I realize that the real reason I sometimes have a hard time respecting my mother is only because she is too busy imagining what she could've become and regretting what she could've done that she sadly fails to see the meaning of the life she has actually lived -- the whole process she calls self-sacrifice.
After reading Sacrifice (and all the other books I've read), and living my life for more than 1/4 of a century, I have come to the conclusion that the meaning of life comes from 'giving' which often requires sacrifice. When I give, the receiving person will also give to another person, and that person will do the same and pay it forward. We will all die, but we will all live on as a participant of a 'giving relay' as long as it goes on.
I don't know how much I will be able to give in my lifetime, how many people I will be able to help when I become a doctor, but every patient I help would not have been saved without my mother's 'sacrifice'. Will my patients think of my mother's existence? Most likely not; they wouldn't even remember the doctor after a while. And does that make my mother's life meaningless? Is she eventually going to disappear forever in cold oblivion? I'd say yes to the latter. But does that matter so much when the unmovable truth is that my mother's sacrifice has helped me help the patient (in some way) to live his life and pay it forward (to someone who hopefully will pay it forward)?
Yojiro, at some point, encounters the concept of "indestructibility of human existence" which appears in a passage written by Mircea Eliade, and states as follows: Every death has contributed to the continuity of life, and my own current life is standing upon the sacrifice of numerous nameless soldiers.
We all fear oblivion because that is our final death. It's scary to think that the evidence that we ever existed is as fragile as a drawing on sand. But even if it is a picture on sand, there are new pictures that will not exist without it. Our life, our sacrifice and love will always be of someone's support, and it's encouraging to think that just because we will never escape oblivion will never change that fact -- something we might call the meaning of life.
I should now call my mom and tell her how much I've appreciated her 'sacrifice'. Because that is why I also want to live to love and give.
Summer vacation has almost come to an end, and as I traveled back, I finished reading 犠牲(sacrifice) written by Kunio Yanagida (published the same year Into the Wild was). It's an essay about his son, Yojiro, who committed suicide at the age of 25 after suffering metal illness for more than a decade. One of his problems being anthropophobia, it was difficult for him to get a job, and thus he despaired that he had nothing he could give to society.
At the same time, he was deeply moved by one of Tarkovsky's films, Sacrifice, which expresses the belief that the reason we can live today in peace is due to "the sacrifice of a nameless person who lives somewhere under the broad blue sky". When Yanagida finds his son brain dead, he agrees to donate his kidneys as a token of Yojiro's existence, thinking that this kind of 'sacrifice' was what he had always wanted.
One of the things Yojiro feared most was oblivion -- the fact that when one dies, even the fact that he lived and suffered will be forgotten and deleted from history. A character from a book I read last summer states the exact same thing, to which the protagonist retorts that he should get over the fear, because "there was a time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after". Her point is that even if some people remember you after your death, they too are going to die, and in the end, there will be no one remaining to remember you anyway. This logic applies even to the world's most famous person, because at some point, the human species will extinct, and the planet will collapse.
I guess it's a decent argument, but obviously, the truth that everyone dies doesn't really liberate you from the fear of death. Logically, I understand that everything is going to disappear one day, that it's nonsense to dwell on whether or not you will survive death for what amounts to less than a fraction of a second in geological time. But emotionally, I still fear the possibility of dying leaving nothing behind. I want to give my life some kind of meaning, and I think a lot of people do, including my mother.
To tell the truth, I'm a terrible daughter -- deep down in my heart, I have not always respected her. I've told her more than once that I will never live a life like hers, and that I was 'different'. Apart from the years she spent working as a language teacher, she has worked as a full time housewife, and since she started seeing her 60th birthday coming around the corner, she started asking herself (and her family) the meaning of her own life. She suddenly realized she had no personal accomplishments, and began questioning the value and meaning of her 'self-sacrifice'.
Now I realize that the real reason I sometimes have a hard time respecting my mother is only because she is too busy imagining what she could've become and regretting what she could've done that she sadly fails to see the meaning of the life she has actually lived -- the whole process she calls self-sacrifice.
After reading Sacrifice (and all the other books I've read), and living my life for more than 1/4 of a century, I have come to the conclusion that the meaning of life comes from 'giving' which often requires sacrifice. When I give, the receiving person will also give to another person, and that person will do the same and pay it forward. We will all die, but we will all live on as a participant of a 'giving relay' as long as it goes on.
I don't know how much I will be able to give in my lifetime, how many people I will be able to help when I become a doctor, but every patient I help would not have been saved without my mother's 'sacrifice'. Will my patients think of my mother's existence? Most likely not; they wouldn't even remember the doctor after a while. And does that make my mother's life meaningless? Is she eventually going to disappear forever in cold oblivion? I'd say yes to the latter. But does that matter so much when the unmovable truth is that my mother's sacrifice has helped me help the patient (in some way) to live his life and pay it forward (to someone who hopefully will pay it forward)?
Yojiro, at some point, encounters the concept of "indestructibility of human existence" which appears in a passage written by Mircea Eliade, and states as follows: Every death has contributed to the continuity of life, and my own current life is standing upon the sacrifice of numerous nameless soldiers.
We all fear oblivion because that is our final death. It's scary to think that the evidence that we ever existed is as fragile as a drawing on sand. But even if it is a picture on sand, there are new pictures that will not exist without it. Our life, our sacrifice and love will always be of someone's support, and it's encouraging to think that just because we will never escape oblivion will never change that fact -- something we might call the meaning of life.
I should now call my mom and tell her how much I've appreciated her 'sacrifice'. Because that is why I also want to live to love and give.
2015年8月3日月曜日
the cards we are dealt
We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.
-- Randy Pausch
I read the rest of the book (Into the Wild) while I traveled back home, and it reminded me of the fact that many patients who came to visit the psychiatry department had divorced parents and other family issues. McCandless doesn't seem to have suffered any mental illness, and what brought him to Alaska was his intense character and adventurous spirit combined with his love of nature, but what pushed him to the extreme -- cutting off all contacts with his family for two years, and ultimately all human contact for his "great Alaskan odyssey" -- was apparently his discovery of his father's past bigamy (which had ended a couple of years after his birth).
McCandless was never withdrawn, and he actually left some lasting memories in the hearts of many people he met in his last years, but obviously had some problems building intimate human relationships, and it seemed to stem from his parents' mistakes that made his "entire childhood seem like fiction". Maybe he needed something to believe in, and nature -- its absolute existence and its merciless honesty -- was what he turned to. He was apparently criticized of his arrogance for trying to live in the wild without enough preparation, but perhaps it was his naivete -- he'd put too much trust not only in himself but the wilderness as well.
The tragedy was not really the fact that such a young man had died alone in starvation, but that he had to die when he was finally ready to go back to civilization and human community -- his severe experience of developing a bond with the wilderness had somehow helped him move on and it seemed like he had just found a way to forgive his parents' imperfections and his own, but that was when one careless mistake took his life.
Then again, I found a not-so-tragic answer to what I'd been wondering when I wrote my last entry -- how he had felt when he realized he was going to die. It reminded me of what Viktor Frankl had said in his book, about how we were always -- always -- free to choose how to react to a circumstance (and death too is one of those circumstances). The author of the book, Krakauer observes that McCandless was unmistakingly at peace in his last picture, "serene as a monk gone to God", and I don't think it was the author's wishful thinking -- the below is what McCandless had written before deciding to walk out of the bush to possibly end his "great Alaskan odyssey". It was shortly after he had shot a moose and regretted it due to his failure of preserving the meet and wasting it. He'd always demanded a great deal of himself (and others) but this moose episode seems to have taught him the value of acceptance:
Consciousness of food. Eat and cook with concentration... Holy food.
I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun.
Deliberate Living: Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns, example→ A job, a task, a book; anything requiring efficient concentration (Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you).
The Great Holiness of FOOD, the Vital Heat.
Positivism, the Insurpassable Joy of the Life Aesthetic.
Reality.
Independence.
Finality -- Stability -- Consistency.
On a side note, the plane I took yesterday had a problem landing, and it flew past the airport into the city. It took the staffs quite a long time to announce what the problem was, and until then, I seriously wondered if the plane had been hijacked or something, and if we were all going to die. To be honest, I was quite upset by the thought of it, mostly because I thought my life hadn't even started yet, but after a while, I just started wondering what the last thing I had said to my mother had been. Had I ignored her last call? Had I been nice to her? I was actually still holding the book in my hands but the whole McCandless story seemed to have dropped off from the surface of my brain.
After a lot of useless and unnecessary panicking and finally landing on the airport, I went straight to my grandmother's place only to find out she was sick, though it was mostly a mental thing; she is always too busy worrying about dying and feeling sick that it almost looks like she never has enough time to have fun. When she started feeling better, I was going through a pile of books on her shelf, and she told me the novel I was holding was supposedly really good: "What was it about... yes, yes! It teaches you how to survive!" She hadn't read it, and I was pretty sure she never would, so I just told her maybe she could just forget about surviving for a moment, and relax. Otherwise, I really wanted to ask her what she wanted to survive for so badly. If she knew, I think she would stop worrying too much, but then again, I will never know how it feels to be 86 for another sixty years.
-- Randy Pausch
I read the rest of the book (Into the Wild) while I traveled back home, and it reminded me of the fact that many patients who came to visit the psychiatry department had divorced parents and other family issues. McCandless doesn't seem to have suffered any mental illness, and what brought him to Alaska was his intense character and adventurous spirit combined with his love of nature, but what pushed him to the extreme -- cutting off all contacts with his family for two years, and ultimately all human contact for his "great Alaskan odyssey" -- was apparently his discovery of his father's past bigamy (which had ended a couple of years after his birth).
McCandless was never withdrawn, and he actually left some lasting memories in the hearts of many people he met in his last years, but obviously had some problems building intimate human relationships, and it seemed to stem from his parents' mistakes that made his "entire childhood seem like fiction". Maybe he needed something to believe in, and nature -- its absolute existence and its merciless honesty -- was what he turned to. He was apparently criticized of his arrogance for trying to live in the wild without enough preparation, but perhaps it was his naivete -- he'd put too much trust not only in himself but the wilderness as well.
The tragedy was not really the fact that such a young man had died alone in starvation, but that he had to die when he was finally ready to go back to civilization and human community -- his severe experience of developing a bond with the wilderness had somehow helped him move on and it seemed like he had just found a way to forgive his parents' imperfections and his own, but that was when one careless mistake took his life.
Then again, I found a not-so-tragic answer to what I'd been wondering when I wrote my last entry -- how he had felt when he realized he was going to die. It reminded me of what Viktor Frankl had said in his book, about how we were always -- always -- free to choose how to react to a circumstance (and death too is one of those circumstances). The author of the book, Krakauer observes that McCandless was unmistakingly at peace in his last picture, "serene as a monk gone to God", and I don't think it was the author's wishful thinking -- the below is what McCandless had written before deciding to walk out of the bush to possibly end his "great Alaskan odyssey". It was shortly after he had shot a moose and regretted it due to his failure of preserving the meet and wasting it. He'd always demanded a great deal of himself (and others) but this moose episode seems to have taught him the value of acceptance:
Consciousness of food. Eat and cook with concentration... Holy food.
I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun.
Deliberate Living: Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns, example→ A job, a task, a book; anything requiring efficient concentration (Circumstance has no value. It is how one relates to a situation that has value. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomenon, what it means to you).
The Great Holiness of FOOD, the Vital Heat.
Positivism, the Insurpassable Joy of the Life Aesthetic.
Reality.
Independence.
Finality -- Stability -- Consistency.
On a side note, the plane I took yesterday had a problem landing, and it flew past the airport into the city. It took the staffs quite a long time to announce what the problem was, and until then, I seriously wondered if the plane had been hijacked or something, and if we were all going to die. To be honest, I was quite upset by the thought of it, mostly because I thought my life hadn't even started yet, but after a while, I just started wondering what the last thing I had said to my mother had been. Had I ignored her last call? Had I been nice to her? I was actually still holding the book in my hands but the whole McCandless story seemed to have dropped off from the surface of my brain.
After a lot of useless and unnecessary panicking and finally landing on the airport, I went straight to my grandmother's place only to find out she was sick, though it was mostly a mental thing; she is always too busy worrying about dying and feeling sick that it almost looks like she never has enough time to have fun. When she started feeling better, I was going through a pile of books on her shelf, and she told me the novel I was holding was supposedly really good: "What was it about... yes, yes! It teaches you how to survive!" She hadn't read it, and I was pretty sure she never would, so I just told her maybe she could just forget about surviving for a moment, and relax. Otherwise, I really wanted to ask her what she wanted to survive for so badly. If she knew, I think she would stop worrying too much, but then again, I will never know how it feels to be 86 for another sixty years.
2015年7月31日金曜日
into the wild
Since I last wrote, I went through training at the neurosurgery and anesthesiology departments, and finally our first term has ended. As soon as I came back home a couple of hours ago, I started reading Into the Wild. I've only read 1/3 of it yet, but I'm slowly beginning to understand this Christopher McCandless -- a kid in his early twenties who ended up dying in the wilderness of Alaska in 1992 after hitchhiking for two years. In one of the letters he wrote to people he met on the road, he talks a great deal about the importance of getting out of your comfort zone. I've heard a lot of people talk about this, and it's a piece of advice that makes me wonder a bit if I'm nearing the end of my twenties missing out on important experiences I could've had had I chosen different ways.
I say this because I've never really tried to get out of my comfort zone in the sense McCandless did. Some people tell me it was very brave of me to decide to switch to medicine after majoring in law, probably because I had to endure some sense of insecurity until I got a place in med school, but it wasn't a crazy plan, like ditching all my possessions and travelling to "see the world" and meet random people on the way. I've always planned my future carefully for a stable job, a stable life, and I value stable human relationships. And actually, I don't necessarily think it's a way of life to be criticized the way McCandless probably did:
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to life of security... ...nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. ...The joy of life come from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
Personally, I think it's perfectly possible to be happy with a "life of security" with no "adventures" or "new experiences" as long as you have good eyes to notice the little reasons to be happy in your sedentary repetitive existence. But maybe it's a totally different type of happiness that you find in the wild -- "the great triumphant joy" to be alive -- and I can only imagine because I've never hitchhiked my way to Alaska, and I probably never will; that is not my dream.
Perhaps I will try to "get out of my comfort zone" in some other way at some point in my life once I start working as a doctor and gain financial freedom. I can almost hear McCandless point out that I have totally missed the point here, but I have no courage to abandon everything and take the risk of dying alone, cold and hungry. I cannot help but wonder if McCandless still believed in his values and the reckless choices he had made when he realized he was going to die.
Still, any life is transient, a passing phenomenon after all, and the security I value is only a borrowed hut I will have to let go anyway. In that sense, there may be nothing to lose at any point in life.
Regarding human relationships, I've learned to value ones that don't necessarily last; it's not only those "stable relationships" I mentioned earlier that shape my life and who I am. Sometimes, a one time encounter can make a mark on someone's life; a single memory can make someone feel glad to be alive. But I have always valued human relationship, and there is one passage Chris wrote that has kind of opened my eyes, of course not in the same way as his "raw transcendent experiences" had opened his own eyes, but I think it's worth quoting:
Still, any life is transient, a passing phenomenon after all, and the security I value is only a borrowed hut I will have to let go anyway. In that sense, there may be nothing to lose at any point in life.
Regarding human relationships, I've learned to value ones that don't necessarily last; it's not only those "stable relationships" I mentioned earlier that shape my life and who I am. Sometimes, a one time encounter can make a mark on someone's life; a single memory can make someone feel glad to be alive. But I have always valued human relationship, and there is one passage Chris wrote that has kind of opened my eyes, of course not in the same way as his "raw transcendent experiences" had opened his own eyes, but I think it's worth quoting:
You are wrong if you think Joy emanate only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. ...My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life.
2015年6月25日木曜日
singing in the rain
It's been raining almost every single day where I live, I haven't been able to sleep well for whatever reason, but the training goes on, and I've been training at the neurology department this week. Today, we visited a hospital where they take care of patients with intractable diseases such as muscular dystrophy and ALS.
One of the first patients we met was a man in is early sixties with ALS who could no longer move his body (including his respiratory muscles -- he was connected to a ventilator) but was still able to move his facial muscles. I knew they used alphabet boards to communicate at that stage, but it was my first time to actually watch a patient do it. The person talking to him would read out the alphabets on the board, and he would blink every time the reader came to the right alphabet. There's an easier way using a computer, but when I watched the man blink with all his strength just to choose a single alphabet in a single word in a single sentence, it felt a bit like having a small carrier pigeon fly back and forth in a small room with one letter at a time, and I couldn't help but realize how lucky we were to be able to communicate so easily. When we left the room, the patient moved his mouth to wish us good luck, and I think it made us all feel relieved that he looked rather cheerful.
But the next patient we saw was a woman in her forties who had been diagnose in her twenties, and was now unable to move even her facial muscles. The doctor explained that it was a case of locked-in syndrome, which I think actually leaves the patient with control over her eyeballs and eyelids, but apparently, she couldn't even move her eyes, so there was no way to communicate her feelings. Her sensory nerves were intact, and she was totally conscious, so she could still hear what others were saying and see what was right in front of her, but no one could tell what she wanted, and she had been that way for the past decade or so. After training as a student doctor for three months at seven departments, this illness is the one I fear most.
Having said that, I don't mean to say that she must have been unhappy. Before we left the hospital, the doctor told us a story about a couple with a son who was born with muscular dystrophy (which is a X-linked recessive disease): when the wife conceived their second child, there was a new option they hadn't had with their first child -- prenatal diagnosis. The wife didn't want to take the test, and was determined to give birth to the baby regardless of his genetic status. However, her husband's parents insisted they get tested, and as a result, they discovered that their second child also had MD. The mother ended up having an abortion, but strongly regretted her decision, especially because she thought it meant that she was unconsciously hoping to let go of her first son as well. She also remembered that many people had told them when he was born that certain babies were born only to parents who could take care of them, and she felt guilty that she had let go of a baby who had "chosen" her.
The patients we met today didn't necessarily look depressed. We didn't get the chance to actually ask about what they thought about their life, but I personally want to believe that all humans have the power to find happiness under any given circumstances. I definitely didn't think it was a bluff when the doctor told us what one patient had said to him: that he was unlucky, but not unhappy. I've thought about the option of prenatal diagnosis a couple of times, but what I thought today was that it was a very arrogant option in a way. Who was I to decide my child was going to become unhappy just because he had a certain gene (or a set of them)? Of course there would be hardships, but any kind of life has hardships. There may be more for him, but he would also have the chance to enjoy happy moments. Even if it was just once, a brief moment, I think it can still be a moment worth living his whole life for. But what I think may not even matter -- the point is that the child will have his own thoughts, his own world, and I can't evaluate it with my sense of value. And at the end of the day, I believe no happiness lasts forever, and when we're feeling happy, it doesn't matter if there are a thousand more moments like that, because right then, we have that, and that's all that matters.
One of the first patients we met was a man in is early sixties with ALS who could no longer move his body (including his respiratory muscles -- he was connected to a ventilator) but was still able to move his facial muscles. I knew they used alphabet boards to communicate at that stage, but it was my first time to actually watch a patient do it. The person talking to him would read out the alphabets on the board, and he would blink every time the reader came to the right alphabet. There's an easier way using a computer, but when I watched the man blink with all his strength just to choose a single alphabet in a single word in a single sentence, it felt a bit like having a small carrier pigeon fly back and forth in a small room with one letter at a time, and I couldn't help but realize how lucky we were to be able to communicate so easily. When we left the room, the patient moved his mouth to wish us good luck, and I think it made us all feel relieved that he looked rather cheerful.
But the next patient we saw was a woman in her forties who had been diagnose in her twenties, and was now unable to move even her facial muscles. The doctor explained that it was a case of locked-in syndrome, which I think actually leaves the patient with control over her eyeballs and eyelids, but apparently, she couldn't even move her eyes, so there was no way to communicate her feelings. Her sensory nerves were intact, and she was totally conscious, so she could still hear what others were saying and see what was right in front of her, but no one could tell what she wanted, and she had been that way for the past decade or so. After training as a student doctor for three months at seven departments, this illness is the one I fear most.
Having said that, I don't mean to say that she must have been unhappy. Before we left the hospital, the doctor told us a story about a couple with a son who was born with muscular dystrophy (which is a X-linked recessive disease): when the wife conceived their second child, there was a new option they hadn't had with their first child -- prenatal diagnosis. The wife didn't want to take the test, and was determined to give birth to the baby regardless of his genetic status. However, her husband's parents insisted they get tested, and as a result, they discovered that their second child also had MD. The mother ended up having an abortion, but strongly regretted her decision, especially because she thought it meant that she was unconsciously hoping to let go of her first son as well. She also remembered that many people had told them when he was born that certain babies were born only to parents who could take care of them, and she felt guilty that she had let go of a baby who had "chosen" her.
The patients we met today didn't necessarily look depressed. We didn't get the chance to actually ask about what they thought about their life, but I personally want to believe that all humans have the power to find happiness under any given circumstances. I definitely didn't think it was a bluff when the doctor told us what one patient had said to him: that he was unlucky, but not unhappy. I've thought about the option of prenatal diagnosis a couple of times, but what I thought today was that it was a very arrogant option in a way. Who was I to decide my child was going to become unhappy just because he had a certain gene (or a set of them)? Of course there would be hardships, but any kind of life has hardships. There may be more for him, but he would also have the chance to enjoy happy moments. Even if it was just once, a brief moment, I think it can still be a moment worth living his whole life for. But what I think may not even matter -- the point is that the child will have his own thoughts, his own world, and I can't evaluate it with my sense of value. And at the end of the day, I believe no happiness lasts forever, and when we're feeling happy, it doesn't matter if there are a thousand more moments like that, because right then, we have that, and that's all that matters.
2015年4月22日水曜日
limited time
It's been a long time since I wrote last. I actually glanced through my last couple of entries, and to tell the truth, I feel a bit embarrassed. If anyone is still reading this blog, I really appreciate it that you took time to read even my whiny posts.
I passed a test in February and am now training in the hospital as a student doctor. So far, I have trained at the radiology department, the urology department, and am now in the gastrointestinal department. There are probably a lot of important things I should be writing about, but in short, I'm learning every day that the human body is a miracle. And every medical knowledge that humans have accumulated over time to maintain the miracle when anything goes wrong, is a miracle. I am amazed by the smallest invention, the smallest discovery that supports the medical services we can provide to patients. And before I forget, it's another miracle that you can sit down. After hours of standing still in surgeries, every chair you see looks like its shining at you. Seriously.
The reason I wanted to write today was because I was greatly moved by a story I heard yesterday about a shogi (Japanese chess) player who died at the age of 29: Satoshi Murayama. He suffered from nephrosis from a very young age, and it was while he was hospitalized that his father introduced him to the world of shogi. He soon got absorbed in it and started studying it by himself. By the time he became thirteen years old, he had won all local tournaments and was willing to study under a shogi master in Osaka to become a professional player. His parents worried about his health and opposed to the idea of their son having to live away from them, but in the end, decided to respect his decision because he insisted he didn't have time.
Murayama's talent bloomed, and he became a professional shogi player in less than three years. He won tournament after tournament, but at the same time, his illness worsened, and he would call his mother to take care of him after every game when he would suffer from high fever. He didn't like the thought of having to depend upon his mother, and would occasionally treat her coldly, but his mother never said anything about it because she had always thought it was her fault that her son had become sick, and she thought there was nothing she could do to make amends to him. She never watched her son's game because she believed shogi was worsening his illness, and she secretly wished he would stop playing.
By age 25, Murayama had become one of the top ten shogi players, but soon found out he had bladder cancer. He refused to go through surgery because it meant he would lose his sexual function, and he was afraid he would not be able to have his own family. In the end though, he was persuaded to have a bladderectomy, and devoted the rest of his life to his only dream that was left now, which was becoming a "meijin" (master of shogi). He returned to the tournaments a month after his surgery, and soon regained his previous rank as one of the top ten players.
However, a couple days before the final match (against Habu -- the most famous shogi player to date) he was told that his cancer had relapsed. He silently watched his mother burst into tears, and after a while, suggested they go out to eat udon (Japanese noodles). On the way, he said he wondered if he could win the game. He told his mother that he really wanted to win, and she was surprised that the match still mattered to him when he was dying. She realized that his focus was only on the present, and she thought that if he was living for today, she should do the same -- that she should stop running away. And finally, when she decided to support her son from the bottom of her heart, her sense of guilt melted away.
The final match started out with Murayama taking control, and he was dominant until he was only a couple of moves away from becoming a meijin, when he suddenly made a poor move. The countdown had started, and he moved a random piece in a rush. It was the kind of mistake he had never made before. The piece he moved lay crooked on the board, and it was fatal. Murayama lost all too soon. But during the interview after the match, he appeared with a radiant face. He had done everything he could. It was five months later that he passed away.
Life doesn't always give us what we want. We all have regrets, and we all worry about the future. But maybe that's only because we're not living in the present. Murayama always knew he didn't have enough time. It reminded me of what Yuzuru Hanyu had said when he was asked why he didn't take some time off after he was injured during a rehearsal. After all, he was already a world champion. He said he wanted to keep on skating because he was aware that his time as an athlete was limited. Some day, his quadruple jumps won't be perfect anymore, and one day, the crowd won't remember his name.
But of course, nothing lasts forever. No matter how many miracles occur, and how much medicine advances, we're all going to grow old; our legs will stop working like they used to, our sweetest memories will fade, and one day, we will die. Our time is limited. So until then, I hope to live like Murayama -- free from past regrets, free from future fears, only focusing on the present and every moment I'm allowed to have.
I passed a test in February and am now training in the hospital as a student doctor. So far, I have trained at the radiology department, the urology department, and am now in the gastrointestinal department. There are probably a lot of important things I should be writing about, but in short, I'm learning every day that the human body is a miracle. And every medical knowledge that humans have accumulated over time to maintain the miracle when anything goes wrong, is a miracle. I am amazed by the smallest invention, the smallest discovery that supports the medical services we can provide to patients. And before I forget, it's another miracle that you can sit down. After hours of standing still in surgeries, every chair you see looks like its shining at you. Seriously.
The reason I wanted to write today was because I was greatly moved by a story I heard yesterday about a shogi (Japanese chess) player who died at the age of 29: Satoshi Murayama. He suffered from nephrosis from a very young age, and it was while he was hospitalized that his father introduced him to the world of shogi. He soon got absorbed in it and started studying it by himself. By the time he became thirteen years old, he had won all local tournaments and was willing to study under a shogi master in Osaka to become a professional player. His parents worried about his health and opposed to the idea of their son having to live away from them, but in the end, decided to respect his decision because he insisted he didn't have time.
Murayama's talent bloomed, and he became a professional shogi player in less than three years. He won tournament after tournament, but at the same time, his illness worsened, and he would call his mother to take care of him after every game when he would suffer from high fever. He didn't like the thought of having to depend upon his mother, and would occasionally treat her coldly, but his mother never said anything about it because she had always thought it was her fault that her son had become sick, and she thought there was nothing she could do to make amends to him. She never watched her son's game because she believed shogi was worsening his illness, and she secretly wished he would stop playing.
By age 25, Murayama had become one of the top ten shogi players, but soon found out he had bladder cancer. He refused to go through surgery because it meant he would lose his sexual function, and he was afraid he would not be able to have his own family. In the end though, he was persuaded to have a bladderectomy, and devoted the rest of his life to his only dream that was left now, which was becoming a "meijin" (master of shogi). He returned to the tournaments a month after his surgery, and soon regained his previous rank as one of the top ten players.
However, a couple days before the final match (against Habu -- the most famous shogi player to date) he was told that his cancer had relapsed. He silently watched his mother burst into tears, and after a while, suggested they go out to eat udon (Japanese noodles). On the way, he said he wondered if he could win the game. He told his mother that he really wanted to win, and she was surprised that the match still mattered to him when he was dying. She realized that his focus was only on the present, and she thought that if he was living for today, she should do the same -- that she should stop running away. And finally, when she decided to support her son from the bottom of her heart, her sense of guilt melted away.
The final match started out with Murayama taking control, and he was dominant until he was only a couple of moves away from becoming a meijin, when he suddenly made a poor move. The countdown had started, and he moved a random piece in a rush. It was the kind of mistake he had never made before. The piece he moved lay crooked on the board, and it was fatal. Murayama lost all too soon. But during the interview after the match, he appeared with a radiant face. He had done everything he could. It was five months later that he passed away.
Life doesn't always give us what we want. We all have regrets, and we all worry about the future. But maybe that's only because we're not living in the present. Murayama always knew he didn't have enough time. It reminded me of what Yuzuru Hanyu had said when he was asked why he didn't take some time off after he was injured during a rehearsal. After all, he was already a world champion. He said he wanted to keep on skating because he was aware that his time as an athlete was limited. Some day, his quadruple jumps won't be perfect anymore, and one day, the crowd won't remember his name.
But of course, nothing lasts forever. No matter how many miracles occur, and how much medicine advances, we're all going to grow old; our legs will stop working like they used to, our sweetest memories will fade, and one day, we will die. Our time is limited. So until then, I hope to live like Murayama -- free from past regrets, free from future fears, only focusing on the present and every moment I'm allowed to have.
2014年8月17日日曜日
leaving a mark
I was folding a paper crane today and suddenly wondered who it was that had first created it. I don't know how many times I've folded a paper crane; maybe a hundred times or nearly two hundred times, and the question never occurred to me until today.
Since I read The Fault in Our Stars two weeks ago, I've been thinking about the meaning of life for the hundredth time. The book is about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love. It's one of the most romantic love stories I've ever known, but what struck me most was the boy's strong desire to leave a mark on the world. Most of my close friends do not seem to have this kind of desire, and I always thought it was just me. I guess the desire is pretty evident in the obsession towards fame we occasionally see in our societies, but still, most of my friends are like the boy's girlfriend who he admires because of her uniqueness of not having that arrogant desire. And I've wondered why.
The boy writes a eulogy for her before he dies, and it shows how he lets go of his own desires -- he comes to the conclusion that most of us can't leave any mark, and even when we do, it's not always a good one; we can cause harm too. So what's important is not what we can do to the universe, but what we can observe from it. We're here to listen to what the universe has to say, and accept it as it is.
I almost hated the book because I loved it. It's kind of embarrassing to admit it, but since I've already mentioned it here in this blog -- I always wanted to be a writer and the dream is not yet dead completely. When I really like a book, it inevitably reminds me of what I will never be. It's really embarrassing that I even need to be "reminded"; it's an obvious fact. So why do I still want to be a writer? Apart from the fact that I like writing, I think it boils down to that desire of leaving a mark on the world. If I didn't care about marks, why is it not enough to write a story and keep it private? Why am I even making this writing public?
I actually found it somewhat contradictory and ironic that a million seller book -- a book that leaves a mark -- insists that leaving a mark is not important. But what does it even mean to "leave a mark"?
I don't think anyone desires to leave a physical mark. No one would want a statue of themselves made if there was no one who looked at it and remembered them. Leaving a mark obviously means leaving a mark in people's minds -- securing a place for yourself in the minds of future people. A good story touches people's hearts over and over, gives the same experience to countless people even after the author's death.
Having said that, it's only an experiece -- one of the many we all go through in our lifetime. A story may touch my heart, but there are also so many other things that touch my heart. Among those many experiences, the story is only a dot in my life. Of course there are big dots and small dots, dots I will remember for a long time, and those that disappear right away. But everything, in the end, is a dot that makes up my life. The nameless person who created the paper crane for the first time in human history, and all the great writers and scientists, and all my ancestors who did or didn't make history -- they are all important to my life in the same way.
A couple of days ago, my French uncle went back to France to visit his ill mother (I met her fifteen years ago when we used to live in France). I wrote her a letter in French (she only speaks French), and it took four hours. Maybe I could've done something more productive, something that would've led to leaving a mark on this world or whatever, but today, I received an email from my aunt telling me that her mother (in law) had read the letter aloud and had dropped tears. She had read it again and again. Considering the fact that she ususally has no family around her, I knew how much the letter meant to her. And I thought -- well, even if I can't write a great story like I once dreamed, I can still create a dot in someone else's life. I may not be able to create millions of dots in millions of lives, but still, there are dots for me to create by living my own life with a bit of compassion.
A movie I just finished watching, Quelques Heurs de Printemps, reminded me of my uncle and his mother. I was greatly moved by the scenery the protagonist's mother saw as she traveled to the place where her euthanasia was to be conducted. It was just trees and the blue sky you see every spring, and yet, when I saw it through her eyes, when I thought this was the last sky I was going to see, I felt like I really had to see it properly. To remember it clearly. But when you know your memory is only going to last for another few hours, that it's going to disappear with you altogether, what value does it have? It's always only that moment that counts -- memento mori, carpe diem.
So rather than worrying about how many dots I can create to "leave a mark", I might as well go to bed now so I can enjoy tomorrow -- a new day that will never come back.
Since I read The Fault in Our Stars two weeks ago, I've been thinking about the meaning of life for the hundredth time. The book is about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love. It's one of the most romantic love stories I've ever known, but what struck me most was the boy's strong desire to leave a mark on the world. Most of my close friends do not seem to have this kind of desire, and I always thought it was just me. I guess the desire is pretty evident in the obsession towards fame we occasionally see in our societies, but still, most of my friends are like the boy's girlfriend who he admires because of her uniqueness of not having that arrogant desire. And I've wondered why.
The boy writes a eulogy for her before he dies, and it shows how he lets go of his own desires -- he comes to the conclusion that most of us can't leave any mark, and even when we do, it's not always a good one; we can cause harm too. So what's important is not what we can do to the universe, but what we can observe from it. We're here to listen to what the universe has to say, and accept it as it is.
I almost hated the book because I loved it. It's kind of embarrassing to admit it, but since I've already mentioned it here in this blog -- I always wanted to be a writer and the dream is not yet dead completely. When I really like a book, it inevitably reminds me of what I will never be. It's really embarrassing that I even need to be "reminded"; it's an obvious fact. So why do I still want to be a writer? Apart from the fact that I like writing, I think it boils down to that desire of leaving a mark on the world. If I didn't care about marks, why is it not enough to write a story and keep it private? Why am I even making this writing public?
I actually found it somewhat contradictory and ironic that a million seller book -- a book that leaves a mark -- insists that leaving a mark is not important. But what does it even mean to "leave a mark"?
I don't think anyone desires to leave a physical mark. No one would want a statue of themselves made if there was no one who looked at it and remembered them. Leaving a mark obviously means leaving a mark in people's minds -- securing a place for yourself in the minds of future people. A good story touches people's hearts over and over, gives the same experience to countless people even after the author's death.
Having said that, it's only an experiece -- one of the many we all go through in our lifetime. A story may touch my heart, but there are also so many other things that touch my heart. Among those many experiences, the story is only a dot in my life. Of course there are big dots and small dots, dots I will remember for a long time, and those that disappear right away. But everything, in the end, is a dot that makes up my life. The nameless person who created the paper crane for the first time in human history, and all the great writers and scientists, and all my ancestors who did or didn't make history -- they are all important to my life in the same way.
A couple of days ago, my French uncle went back to France to visit his ill mother (I met her fifteen years ago when we used to live in France). I wrote her a letter in French (she only speaks French), and it took four hours. Maybe I could've done something more productive, something that would've led to leaving a mark on this world or whatever, but today, I received an email from my aunt telling me that her mother (in law) had read the letter aloud and had dropped tears. She had read it again and again. Considering the fact that she ususally has no family around her, I knew how much the letter meant to her. And I thought -- well, even if I can't write a great story like I once dreamed, I can still create a dot in someone else's life. I may not be able to create millions of dots in millions of lives, but still, there are dots for me to create by living my own life with a bit of compassion.
A movie I just finished watching, Quelques Heurs de Printemps, reminded me of my uncle and his mother. I was greatly moved by the scenery the protagonist's mother saw as she traveled to the place where her euthanasia was to be conducted. It was just trees and the blue sky you see every spring, and yet, when I saw it through her eyes, when I thought this was the last sky I was going to see, I felt like I really had to see it properly. To remember it clearly. But when you know your memory is only going to last for another few hours, that it's going to disappear with you altogether, what value does it have? It's always only that moment that counts -- memento mori, carpe diem.
So rather than worrying about how many dots I can create to "leave a mark", I might as well go to bed now so I can enjoy tomorrow -- a new day that will never come back.
2014年6月23日月曜日
just the way we are
In today's result-oriented system, almost everything is conditional. To be worthy, we have to be good at something. With nothing to be proud of, we're called losers. With no contribution to the society, we're worthless. In Japan, we have to be married and have children to be a woman.
About a week ago, a 35 year old female member of the Tokyo assembly was subjected to sexist abuse while she tried to debate support for childrearing (the details are here). It took more than five days for one of the male culprits to come out and admit the inappropriateness of his remark ("You're the one who should get married"). He did not admit his underlying disrespect to single women with no children. We still don't know who did the rest of the heckling ("Are you even able to have children?" etc.)
Many Japanese showed anger towards this incident. But I think the male councillors precisely represent the general Japanese who do think that women should get married and rear children rather than stay single. These kind of people think of marriage and childrearing as what makes women a full human being, and also what gives them "true happiness".
The declining birthrate is a serious problem. Personally, I don't understand the feelings of people who avoid marriage because they don't want to "grow up", or because they might "get tired of their partner". But lack of responsibility is not the only reason why someone is single. It might not even be their choice. If it is their choice, it must be a very important choice to them -- a conclusion they came to after overcoming many difficulties in their lives. Happiness is different to everyone, and we have to respect every shape of happiness as well as every lifestyle.
Apparently, many young people are doing the Shikoku Pilgrimage lately. During the pilgrimage, they are given free meals along the way from local people. It's a tradition from hundreds of years ago when pilgrims were called 稀人(rare person). The local people have welcomed them unconditionally to this day: every pilgrim is welcomed the same way, and as a result, by the time they finish their pilgrimage, they realize that they are worthy just the way they are.
We all want to be accepted unconditionally -- married or unmarried, with or without children.
About a week ago, a 35 year old female member of the Tokyo assembly was subjected to sexist abuse while she tried to debate support for childrearing (the details are here). It took more than five days for one of the male culprits to come out and admit the inappropriateness of his remark ("You're the one who should get married"). He did not admit his underlying disrespect to single women with no children. We still don't know who did the rest of the heckling ("Are you even able to have children?" etc.)
Many Japanese showed anger towards this incident. But I think the male councillors precisely represent the general Japanese who do think that women should get married and rear children rather than stay single. These kind of people think of marriage and childrearing as what makes women a full human being, and also what gives them "true happiness".
The declining birthrate is a serious problem. Personally, I don't understand the feelings of people who avoid marriage because they don't want to "grow up", or because they might "get tired of their partner". But lack of responsibility is not the only reason why someone is single. It might not even be their choice. If it is their choice, it must be a very important choice to them -- a conclusion they came to after overcoming many difficulties in their lives. Happiness is different to everyone, and we have to respect every shape of happiness as well as every lifestyle.
Apparently, many young people are doing the Shikoku Pilgrimage lately. During the pilgrimage, they are given free meals along the way from local people. It's a tradition from hundreds of years ago when pilgrims were called 稀人(rare person). The local people have welcomed them unconditionally to this day: every pilgrim is welcomed the same way, and as a result, by the time they finish their pilgrimage, they realize that they are worthy just the way they are.
We all want to be accepted unconditionally -- married or unmarried, with or without children.
2014年6月13日金曜日
if i die tomorrow
Another old draft (I've been sorting out my drafts lately):
I daydream daily. And I sometimes imagine myself being a mother of a small child with only a month left to live. Of course it's not a very nice scenario, and I have no plan or possibility of becoming a mother in the near future, but I've daydreamed about this situation a couple of times. I think it's because it gives me a rather new perspective. It makes me think about what is really important to me when I think about what kind of message I would want to leave my child. This is the list for now, but I actually think it would be a good idea to update it occasionally.
1. Always keep in mind what is truly important to you.
Your time is limited. If you choose to do one thing, you lose the opportunity to do another. Choosing means dumping. So in order to live a good life, you need the courage to dump, and for that, you need to know what is important and what is less important to you.
Knowing what is important also helps you control your emotions because you wouldn't be influenced by small things that may go wrong. If you're depressed, always ask yourself if it's something really important to you. If you're hit by failure, think about why that matters. What's your ultimate goal in life? When you feel like everything's over, try to imagine the bigger picture.
Know what is truly important to you, and it will lead you to the best decision.
2. Accept yourself for who you are. Mistakes and all.
Life is a constant process of making decisions. You are made by the decisions you've made. But you can't always make the best decision. There will be some decisions that you regret later, or those that you regret even while making them. Sometimes you know you will regret it later and still make that decision. It's difficult to always do your best. But that's okay. Even if you made a stupid decision, that was the best you could do. And the current you is the best you could've been. Don't think about the could've's and might've's.
3. Try to do your best but accept your limitations.
Doing your best can be somewhat frightful. What if your efforts don't pay off? What if you only end up proving yourself (and others) that you're no good? What if everything turns out to be a waste? All these questions are normal, but you just have try, because that's the only way you're going to know what you're good at. You can't win without fighting. And if you keep fighting, you might win in the end. But if you face your limitations, be brave enough to give up and accept that limitation.
If that's what you really like though (maybe to the extent that you do it because there's no other choice), stick to it, no matter what. Because one day, everything is going to disappear -- this whole universe and all -- and when that happens, all that matters is how much you cherished every moment.
4. Nothing has to be perfect.
1. to 3. might be summed up to this. If you realize that you're looking for perfection, let it go. Always remember to look at the big picture -- what is truly important to you and why. You can't get everything. In the end, nothing is permanent anyway, and keeping that in mind also may help you be tolerant towards yourself and others. Appreciate what you have now. Don't take "ordinary" things for granted. Love yourself for who you are now; not for what you hope to be in the future.
5. Learn a foreign language. And be fluent if possible.
Your thoughts are made of words. Language shapes your thoughts. Learning a foreign language gives you another world to live in, another perspective that would save you, and countless discoveries you would never have experienced with your mother tongue, because by learning a foreign language, you can experience another culture from the inside. If you become fluent, it's almost like getting another brain.
Fluency comes from reading and writing. Write, write, write. Get used to thinking in that language.
6. Read books.
If you have a question, someone else probably has the same question. And that someone could even be from another country, another age. Some people keep records of their thoughts and some of them get published. Almost every question is answered somewhere by someone in the way that would convince you. Search for it. Keep searching until you either find the answer in a book or inside yourself. Writings that is seemingly unrelated to your current question will help you anyway in the future so don't worry if you think it's a waste of time.
7. Learn an instrument.
Living in the moment may be easily said than done. Music can almost give you a blank state of mind and a very emotional experience all at the same time. It helps you develop concentration -- the power to concentrate on this moment now. Maybe it's a form of meditation; when you focus all your nerves to your fingers and the sounds they make, there's no space for random thoughts that distract you during other activities. And last but not least, music is borderless.
8. Eat well and excercise regularly.
A sane mind comes from a sane body. Our bodies are made of what we eat and how we use it. The brain is influenced by glucose level, hormones, and other chemical substance. Good meals are essential. Better if combined with good conversation. And since body muscles are as important as brain muscles, make excercise a habit. Playing sports also has the same effect as learning an instrument.
9. If all the above does not work, and one day, you feel like death is the only choice, get something to eat and get some sleep. No alcohol.
The reason is simple: no decision made under hunger, lack of sleep, or intoxication is good enough.
10. If you wake up in the morning, and your feeling hasn't changed, stop focusing on yourself.
Finding your own happiness is not the only goal in your life. Live to make others happy. There is always someone in need of good company -- someone who needs another person who really understands his hardships. If you're thrown down to the point of wanting to die, you will know what you can do for him.
Dying is never too late. So leave that option for later. Don't dwell on things you can't do anything about. Even amidst regret, jealousy and despair, there is something you can do. It may seem trifle; it might be something anyone can do. But live until you find it. Because eventually, you will find it, and it will mean something to someone else.
I daydream daily. And I sometimes imagine myself being a mother of a small child with only a month left to live. Of course it's not a very nice scenario, and I have no plan or possibility of becoming a mother in the near future, but I've daydreamed about this situation a couple of times. I think it's because it gives me a rather new perspective. It makes me think about what is really important to me when I think about what kind of message I would want to leave my child. This is the list for now, but I actually think it would be a good idea to update it occasionally.
1. Always keep in mind what is truly important to you.
Your time is limited. If you choose to do one thing, you lose the opportunity to do another. Choosing means dumping. So in order to live a good life, you need the courage to dump, and for that, you need to know what is important and what is less important to you.
Knowing what is important also helps you control your emotions because you wouldn't be influenced by small things that may go wrong. If you're depressed, always ask yourself if it's something really important to you. If you're hit by failure, think about why that matters. What's your ultimate goal in life? When you feel like everything's over, try to imagine the bigger picture.
Know what is truly important to you, and it will lead you to the best decision.
2. Accept yourself for who you are. Mistakes and all.
Life is a constant process of making decisions. You are made by the decisions you've made. But you can't always make the best decision. There will be some decisions that you regret later, or those that you regret even while making them. Sometimes you know you will regret it later and still make that decision. It's difficult to always do your best. But that's okay. Even if you made a stupid decision, that was the best you could do. And the current you is the best you could've been. Don't think about the could've's and might've's.
3. Try to do your best but accept your limitations.
Doing your best can be somewhat frightful. What if your efforts don't pay off? What if you only end up proving yourself (and others) that you're no good? What if everything turns out to be a waste? All these questions are normal, but you just have try, because that's the only way you're going to know what you're good at. You can't win without fighting. And if you keep fighting, you might win in the end. But if you face your limitations, be brave enough to give up and accept that limitation.
If that's what you really like though (maybe to the extent that you do it because there's no other choice), stick to it, no matter what. Because one day, everything is going to disappear -- this whole universe and all -- and when that happens, all that matters is how much you cherished every moment.
4. Nothing has to be perfect.
1. to 3. might be summed up to this. If you realize that you're looking for perfection, let it go. Always remember to look at the big picture -- what is truly important to you and why. You can't get everything. In the end, nothing is permanent anyway, and keeping that in mind also may help you be tolerant towards yourself and others. Appreciate what you have now. Don't take "ordinary" things for granted. Love yourself for who you are now; not for what you hope to be in the future.
5. Learn a foreign language. And be fluent if possible.
Your thoughts are made of words. Language shapes your thoughts. Learning a foreign language gives you another world to live in, another perspective that would save you, and countless discoveries you would never have experienced with your mother tongue, because by learning a foreign language, you can experience another culture from the inside. If you become fluent, it's almost like getting another brain.
Fluency comes from reading and writing. Write, write, write. Get used to thinking in that language.
6. Read books.
If you have a question, someone else probably has the same question. And that someone could even be from another country, another age. Some people keep records of their thoughts and some of them get published. Almost every question is answered somewhere by someone in the way that would convince you. Search for it. Keep searching until you either find the answer in a book or inside yourself. Writings that is seemingly unrelated to your current question will help you anyway in the future so don't worry if you think it's a waste of time.
7. Learn an instrument.
Living in the moment may be easily said than done. Music can almost give you a blank state of mind and a very emotional experience all at the same time. It helps you develop concentration -- the power to concentrate on this moment now. Maybe it's a form of meditation; when you focus all your nerves to your fingers and the sounds they make, there's no space for random thoughts that distract you during other activities. And last but not least, music is borderless.
8. Eat well and excercise regularly.
A sane mind comes from a sane body. Our bodies are made of what we eat and how we use it. The brain is influenced by glucose level, hormones, and other chemical substance. Good meals are essential. Better if combined with good conversation. And since body muscles are as important as brain muscles, make excercise a habit. Playing sports also has the same effect as learning an instrument.
9. If all the above does not work, and one day, you feel like death is the only choice, get something to eat and get some sleep. No alcohol.
The reason is simple: no decision made under hunger, lack of sleep, or intoxication is good enough.
10. If you wake up in the morning, and your feeling hasn't changed, stop focusing on yourself.
Finding your own happiness is not the only goal in your life. Live to make others happy. There is always someone in need of good company -- someone who needs another person who really understands his hardships. If you're thrown down to the point of wanting to die, you will know what you can do for him.
Dying is never too late. So leave that option for later. Don't dwell on things you can't do anything about. Even amidst regret, jealousy and despair, there is something you can do. It may seem trifle; it might be something anyone can do. But live until you find it. Because eventually, you will find it, and it will mean something to someone else.
2014年6月12日木曜日
reunion
This was an entry dated July 8, 2013, around the time I went on hiatus. Found it in my drafts:
Without the time I spent in New Zealand, I probably would have been a very different person. It was where I first learned English. It was where I learned that I was "Japanese". It was where I learned it was only mongoloid kids that had blue butts. And it was where I first went to school and made friends and "fell in love" with a Michael who lived nextdoor.
The past weekend, I met up with a friend from New Zealand whom I hadn't met in eighteen years.
The very first time I met her was at a uniform store. We were both with our parents, buying shirts and skirts and gym clothes, and had the same problem with the size: When you're growing, you don't want to buy anything that's too big but you want something that would still fit you after a year or two. As a result, you end up trying on T shirts that are too big. I pulled at the extra piece of cloth that hung under my arms.
In another fitting room, another girl was trying on the same shirt, pulling at the cloth that drooped over her thin arm. That was her. According to my mother (who remembers the incident more clearly), the little girl followed her around and asked where we were from. She was so intrigued to see these Asian people who looked different and spoke differently.
The next time we met was on the first day of school. Her seat happened to be across from mine. She was so ecstatic to see me that it almost scared me. I never thought she would be my best friend for the next two years.
When I think about her now, it's still the little girl with big ears and freckles wearing a sleevless check dress under the cloudy winter sky. We hadn't been in contact in years when we found each other on Facebook. Her father had died but she still had the portrait of the five-year-old me my dad had painted, which had ended up at her place for some reason.
When I saw her at the hotel lobby last weekend, I recognized her right away. She hadn't changed at all -- even the size of her head! Well, she'd gotten taller and she'd developed some really nice breasts but that was about it. She probably thought the same about me (except the breast part). I was more worried about what kind of person she'd grown up to be, but she hadn't really changed inside either. Maybe she had; maybe we just couldn't catch up enough to realize the change; maybe there were some moments we felt distant, but she laughed the same way. And she remembered what I remembered. In a world where almost everything keeps changing, it's nice to find that certain things stay the same.
Without the time I spent in New Zealand, I probably would have been a very different person. It was where I first learned English. It was where I learned that I was "Japanese". It was where I learned it was only mongoloid kids that had blue butts. And it was where I first went to school and made friends and "fell in love" with a Michael who lived nextdoor.
The past weekend, I met up with a friend from New Zealand whom I hadn't met in eighteen years.
The very first time I met her was at a uniform store. We were both with our parents, buying shirts and skirts and gym clothes, and had the same problem with the size: When you're growing, you don't want to buy anything that's too big but you want something that would still fit you after a year or two. As a result, you end up trying on T shirts that are too big. I pulled at the extra piece of cloth that hung under my arms.
In another fitting room, another girl was trying on the same shirt, pulling at the cloth that drooped over her thin arm. That was her. According to my mother (who remembers the incident more clearly), the little girl followed her around and asked where we were from. She was so intrigued to see these Asian people who looked different and spoke differently.
The next time we met was on the first day of school. Her seat happened to be across from mine. She was so ecstatic to see me that it almost scared me. I never thought she would be my best friend for the next two years.
When I think about her now, it's still the little girl with big ears and freckles wearing a sleevless check dress under the cloudy winter sky. We hadn't been in contact in years when we found each other on Facebook. Her father had died but she still had the portrait of the five-year-old me my dad had painted, which had ended up at her place for some reason.
When I saw her at the hotel lobby last weekend, I recognized her right away. She hadn't changed at all -- even the size of her head! Well, she'd gotten taller and she'd developed some really nice breasts but that was about it. She probably thought the same about me (except the breast part). I was more worried about what kind of person she'd grown up to be, but she hadn't really changed inside either. Maybe she had; maybe we just couldn't catch up enough to realize the change; maybe there were some moments we felt distant, but she laughed the same way. And she remembered what I remembered. In a world where almost everything keeps changing, it's nice to find that certain things stay the same.
2014年5月31日土曜日
formula of life
Yesterday, I had a role playing class in which I had to play the role of a doctor who had to persuade his unconfident patient to work on losing weight (because the physical checkup showed that she had borderline DMII and metabolic syndrome).
To be honest, I was a bit shocked when I saw the demonstration weeks ago. We were first told to praise the patient for writing his own self-monitoring sheet and to show appreciation for his every effort. Doctors should never deny what the patient says (we just accept it and nod with an understanding attitude) and we patiently suggest what might be a good method for the unmotivated patient to lose weight while he complains why he is unable to do such and such. This all seemed too much to me. I mean, we're talking about the patient's own health! Why does the doctor have to show appreciation? It's first and foremost the patient's responsiblity. I'm really interested if this is a very "Japanese" class or if doctors abroad are also expected to treat their patients like "clients".
That said, I am prepared to do whatever it takes for a patient's health. So in yesterday's class, I did exactly what I was told to do, and the supervising doctor pretty much loved my act but commented that he would not want to get in an argument with someone who talked like me. One of my peers told me he wouldn't want to see me next time if he had been the patient and had failed meeting the set goal (which was simply not to lay out snacks in the basket where she could see them). He said he would seriously consider changing hospitals in the case of failure. According to the doctor, I was straightforward, eager, to the point, and was really good at casually cornering the patient into a situation where she could no longer say no. In short, I was talking more like a lawyer than a doctor. I have yet to see my "legal background" come into good use...
So do I consider my previous education a waste? This is not a question I've ever really asked myself because it's nonsense. I am aware that going the long way was partly necessary for a human being like me, and I just happened to pick up a law degree along the way. But of course, if there had been a way to avoid all the twists and turns, I would like to know. I actually asked this question to another blogger who seemed like an efficiency-prioritizing father very much devoted to his son's education:
...But many student do change their mind after entering college. In some cases, they gradually realize what they really want is different from what they had thought they had wanted. So my question is, do you think there is a way to avoid this kind of "mistake" and to know your calling at age 14 or even younger? In other words, is there some kind of formula we can use to lead an "efficient life" without having to go the long way?
He gave me a response that made me realize (again) how lucky I am to have had parents who provided me with good education so I could choose whatever I wanted to do when the time came, but my own question led me to another train of thoughts.
As a child, I never liked memorizing formulas -- I would pretty much obsess over how they came to be and get kind of upset when I didn't understand. But my mother told me I would realize some day that those stuff were not really important in living my life (unless I was some kind of genius who planned to live in academia). If I could pass my exams required to do what I ultimately wanted to do, then it didn't really matter if I fully understood everything. She repeatedly told me my life wouldn't end just because I didn't understand! In fact, life goes on no matter what. Formulas were created by smart people -- boneheads can leave the difficult part to them and just use their legacy without furthur thoughts.
Although our lives can't be determined by a simple math formula, it seems to me like some people are good at living their lives according to a kind of formula. They are flexible and some of them use it in a creative way to lead an efficient and happy life. On the other hand, I'm still not really good at "accepting" an existing formula right away and using it. I have to experience trial and error to confirm that the formula is "right", or maybe it's like I'm trying to create my own formula. Either way, it's not that different from how I used to write down all the thinking process that would lead me to a formula I had learned. It's luxury; it was only possible because I could find the time one way or another -- the time to probe into matters and take them hard. My mother still has to tell me that's not the only way to live a life. "Self cornering is not the only philosophy," she says. "You don't have to be special. Being mediocre is enough. You ask too much from yourself." I totally agree. If I ask less from myself, I would ask less from my patients, and then they wouldn't have to change hospitals just because they can't stick to a small goal.
A formula I should keep in mind: no one is perfect = everyone needs an escape
To be honest, I was a bit shocked when I saw the demonstration weeks ago. We were first told to praise the patient for writing his own self-monitoring sheet and to show appreciation for his every effort. Doctors should never deny what the patient says (we just accept it and nod with an understanding attitude) and we patiently suggest what might be a good method for the unmotivated patient to lose weight while he complains why he is unable to do such and such. This all seemed too much to me. I mean, we're talking about the patient's own health! Why does the doctor have to show appreciation? It's first and foremost the patient's responsiblity. I'm really interested if this is a very "Japanese" class or if doctors abroad are also expected to treat their patients like "clients".
That said, I am prepared to do whatever it takes for a patient's health. So in yesterday's class, I did exactly what I was told to do, and the supervising doctor pretty much loved my act but commented that he would not want to get in an argument with someone who talked like me. One of my peers told me he wouldn't want to see me next time if he had been the patient and had failed meeting the set goal (which was simply not to lay out snacks in the basket where she could see them). He said he would seriously consider changing hospitals in the case of failure. According to the doctor, I was straightforward, eager, to the point, and was really good at casually cornering the patient into a situation where she could no longer say no. In short, I was talking more like a lawyer than a doctor. I have yet to see my "legal background" come into good use...
So do I consider my previous education a waste? This is not a question I've ever really asked myself because it's nonsense. I am aware that going the long way was partly necessary for a human being like me, and I just happened to pick up a law degree along the way. But of course, if there had been a way to avoid all the twists and turns, I would like to know. I actually asked this question to another blogger who seemed like an efficiency-prioritizing father very much devoted to his son's education:
...But many student do change their mind after entering college. In some cases, they gradually realize what they really want is different from what they had thought they had wanted. So my question is, do you think there is a way to avoid this kind of "mistake" and to know your calling at age 14 or even younger? In other words, is there some kind of formula we can use to lead an "efficient life" without having to go the long way?
He gave me a response that made me realize (again) how lucky I am to have had parents who provided me with good education so I could choose whatever I wanted to do when the time came, but my own question led me to another train of thoughts.
As a child, I never liked memorizing formulas -- I would pretty much obsess over how they came to be and get kind of upset when I didn't understand. But my mother told me I would realize some day that those stuff were not really important in living my life (unless I was some kind of genius who planned to live in academia). If I could pass my exams required to do what I ultimately wanted to do, then it didn't really matter if I fully understood everything. She repeatedly told me my life wouldn't end just because I didn't understand! In fact, life goes on no matter what. Formulas were created by smart people -- boneheads can leave the difficult part to them and just use their legacy without furthur thoughts.
Although our lives can't be determined by a simple math formula, it seems to me like some people are good at living their lives according to a kind of formula. They are flexible and some of them use it in a creative way to lead an efficient and happy life. On the other hand, I'm still not really good at "accepting" an existing formula right away and using it. I have to experience trial and error to confirm that the formula is "right", or maybe it's like I'm trying to create my own formula. Either way, it's not that different from how I used to write down all the thinking process that would lead me to a formula I had learned. It's luxury; it was only possible because I could find the time one way or another -- the time to probe into matters and take them hard. My mother still has to tell me that's not the only way to live a life. "Self cornering is not the only philosophy," she says. "You don't have to be special. Being mediocre is enough. You ask too much from yourself." I totally agree. If I ask less from myself, I would ask less from my patients, and then they wouldn't have to change hospitals just because they can't stick to a small goal.
A formula I should keep in mind: no one is perfect = everyone needs an escape
2014年5月24日土曜日
continuing and gaining trust
（大切なのは）当たり前のことを当たり前でないくらいやり続けること
(The important thing is) to continue doing ordinary things for an extraordinary period of time.
- Shinya Miyamoto （宮本慎也）
This habit trains you to have a stronger will. Motivation apparently doesn't last -- your will is the power to continue when you don't have the motivation. Many athletes (such as Ichiro Suzuki and the baseball player above) have achieved their goals not by motivation but by this strong will.
I think continuing certain things under any circumstances also gives you confidence. It's like keeping a promise to yourself. When you keep breaking it, you eventually lose trust in yourself, but if you can keep it every single day, it proves yourself that you're worth trusting -- which means you have confidence.
I've had a vague impression that this kind of confidence has a lot to do with "the power to endure" I had written about in my last post. To endure the current unsatisfying state, you have to believe in your future self -- that she will be better and thus the future will be better. To trust in your future self, you obviously have to trust your current self, and the above habit of continuing seems to be the key.
I've actually been trying to live a disciplined life lately (if that doesn't sound too funny), sticking to several things and making them a habit. I'll report about the results after a couple of months!
(The important thing is) to continue doing ordinary things for an extraordinary period of time.
- Shinya Miyamoto （宮本慎也）
This habit trains you to have a stronger will. Motivation apparently doesn't last -- your will is the power to continue when you don't have the motivation. Many athletes (such as Ichiro Suzuki and the baseball player above) have achieved their goals not by motivation but by this strong will.
I think continuing certain things under any circumstances also gives you confidence. It's like keeping a promise to yourself. When you keep breaking it, you eventually lose trust in yourself, but if you can keep it every single day, it proves yourself that you're worth trusting -- which means you have confidence.
I've had a vague impression that this kind of confidence has a lot to do with "the power to endure" I had written about in my last post. To endure the current unsatisfying state, you have to believe in your future self -- that she will be better and thus the future will be better. To trust in your future self, you obviously have to trust your current self, and the above habit of continuing seems to be the key.
I've actually been trying to live a disciplined life lately (if that doesn't sound too funny), sticking to several things and making them a habit. I'll report about the results after a couple of months!
2014年5月23日金曜日
patience and tolerance
An old draft -- posting because it reminds me of important stuff:
I've noticed lately that it gets harder and harder to stay friends with some people from high school. After all, you're not in the same school anymore. You start going different ways and your perspective changes.
My current best friend O from high school was not my "best friend" when we were in school. We became closer after graduation because our life stages and our basic attitude towards life and work happened to match. We once agreed that other people's happy rosey stories could sometimes be hurtful when your life was not going well, and O has opened up to me even more ever since.
I have a bitter memory from a couple of years ago (which I think I've written about before): I met up with another friend from high school and she made me feel like the ugliest living being on earth. She was happy with a bright career, a caring talented boyfriend, and talked about her future daughter who she hoped would model for her painter husband -- while I, on the other hand, had nothing but a new dream. I wanted to be happy for her; I wanted to stop comparing and just be happy for this happy friend but I couldn't do anything about my ugly feelings.
Obviously, there are ups and downs in life. I'm not going to break a friendship every time I feel left behind. I've noticed that avoiding certain people during certain times is one way to keep peace. But apparently, the reason we compare ourselves with others in the first place is because we're arrogant and we forget to appreciate what we have. I didn't think I exactly lacked appreciation when my heart turned ugly, but I definitely wasn't happy with my own life, which might mean I did lack appreciation.
So why wasn't I happy? The question reminds me of what my professor in grad school said to us in our first Chinese politics class:
勉強の肝は「わからない状態に耐える力」である。今までは何でもすぐに理解できたかもしれないが、勉強が高度になればなるほどわからないことがたくさん出てくる。その時に、性急に答えを求めずに耐えることを覚えなければならない。
What you have to take to heart is "the power to endure when you don't understand". The more complicated your studies become, the more you will encounter things you don't understand. Do not hurry to the answer when that happens; endure the situation.
I guess the important part was that he was talking to students who had always been able to get to answers fairly easily and thus lacked patience. He was warning us that that was not always going to work from now on.
I actually still tend to hurry to get to answers; it's almost like I fear the state of not being able to understand. And maybe that is reflected in my whole attitude towards what I aim in life -- if I want something, I want it now (which ironically shows how lucky I've been). But if I could grow this "power to endure", I will probably appreciate everything I already understand, everything I already have, and be happy even when I can't have what I want.
I've noticed lately that it gets harder and harder to stay friends with some people from high school. After all, you're not in the same school anymore. You start going different ways and your perspective changes.
My current best friend O from high school was not my "best friend" when we were in school. We became closer after graduation because our life stages and our basic attitude towards life and work happened to match. We once agreed that other people's happy rosey stories could sometimes be hurtful when your life was not going well, and O has opened up to me even more ever since.
I have a bitter memory from a couple of years ago (which I think I've written about before): I met up with another friend from high school and she made me feel like the ugliest living being on earth. She was happy with a bright career, a caring talented boyfriend, and talked about her future daughter who she hoped would model for her painter husband -- while I, on the other hand, had nothing but a new dream. I wanted to be happy for her; I wanted to stop comparing and just be happy for this happy friend but I couldn't do anything about my ugly feelings.
Obviously, there are ups and downs in life. I'm not going to break a friendship every time I feel left behind. I've noticed that avoiding certain people during certain times is one way to keep peace. But apparently, the reason we compare ourselves with others in the first place is because we're arrogant and we forget to appreciate what we have. I didn't think I exactly lacked appreciation when my heart turned ugly, but I definitely wasn't happy with my own life, which might mean I did lack appreciation.
So why wasn't I happy? The question reminds me of what my professor in grad school said to us in our first Chinese politics class:
勉強の肝は「わからない状態に耐える力」である。今までは何でもすぐに理解できたかもしれないが、勉強が高度になればなるほどわからないことがたくさん出てくる。その時に、性急に答えを求めずに耐えることを覚えなければならない。
What you have to take to heart is "the power to endure when you don't understand". The more complicated your studies become, the more you will encounter things you don't understand. Do not hurry to the answer when that happens; endure the situation.
I guess the important part was that he was talking to students who had always been able to get to answers fairly easily and thus lacked patience. He was warning us that that was not always going to work from now on.
I actually still tend to hurry to get to answers; it's almost like I fear the state of not being able to understand. And maybe that is reflected in my whole attitude towards what I aim in life -- if I want something, I want it now (which ironically shows how lucky I've been). But if I could grow this "power to endure", I will probably appreciate everything I already understand, everything I already have, and be happy even when I can't have what I want.
2014年5月9日金曜日
sense of worthiness
Tonight, I listened to this talk by Brene Brown, recommended by a friend. I've mentioned her book a couple of posts ago, and what I didn't like in the book, I didn't like in her talk. Frankly speaking, I think she tends to dramatize her so-called breakdown. But maybe that's just because I'm Japanese and sometimes every sentence spoken by an American can sound exaggerated (no offense; it's just a cultural difference). Either way, that's not what I want to write about. Below is breifly what she says (for people like me who aren't really interested in her personal stories but still want to know the essence of her talk in five minutes):
We all live for connection, but there's an obstacle called shame.
Shame = fear of disconnection.
"Is there something about me that if people know or see it they would think I'm not worthy of connection?" The feeling of "I'm not smart/thin/pretty/promoted enough."
But in order to let connection happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen.
People who have a strong sense of love and belonging have a strong sense of worthiness -- they think they are worthy of connection. These people have
1. courage = the ability to tell the story of who they are with all their heart; the courage to be imperfect
2. compassion = the ability to be kind to themseves because we can't practice compassion with others if you can't treat yourself kindly
3. authenticity = the willingness to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they are
Connection is the result of the above three. Those people with a sense of worthiness embrace vulnerability and believe that what make them vulnerable make them beautiful. They know the necessity of the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees.
The world we live in is a vulnerable world. So we numb vulnerability with addiction and whatnot. But we can't selectively numb feelings without numbing other emotions so we end up numbing joy, gratitude, happiness, everything. We struggle to make the uncertain certain, to perfect ourselves and our children (when in fact, they are wired for struggle when they get here and our role is to tell them they are worthy of love and belonging despite their imperfection), and to pretend that what we do doesn't affect others.
Instead, what we should do is to let ourselves be deeply and vulnerably seen, which means
1. to love with our whole hearts even if there's no guarantee
2. to practice gratitude and lean into joy in those moments when we're wondering: Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this so passionately? Can I be this firece about this? -- just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say I'm just so grateful, because to feel so vulnerable means I'm alive.
3. to believe that we're enough. Not when we're perfect, but just the way we are.
...So how do we believe that we're enough? I get it that if we feel worthy, we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable and hence find connection. But how do we believe we're worthy? This was the question I was left with.
The word worthiness hit me strong because the moment I heard it, I knew it was exactly what I lacked when I did what I most regret in my life: sleeping with someone I didn't even like. It was just once, but the regret has haunted me for years. I knew a guy was drooling over me, thought I could use him to make myself feel worthy, and ended up feeling used, probably because I let it happen when deep down my mind was actually saying no. It's the most foolish thing I've ever done, and one of the saddest stories I've ever known -- I was not brought up by parents who loved me only when I was perfect. They always, always loved me, no matter what, and still, I took their love for granted and thought I was not worthy of anyone else's love.
I don't think about it anymore, but when I do the pain is excruciating -- my imperfection regarding this mistake is almost unacceptable, though at some point I realized there was no other choice but to accept it and move on.
As a result, I no longer suffer to find the reason of my worthiness, but I still think it's impossible to love myself unconditionally. I mean, you can't just sleep all day, do whatever you like, and say, well, that's me, I love who I am! I know all I can do is to do what I can, keep doing what I must do to accomplish my dreams, however small or big they may be, and just do my best every day, because that's the only way for me to feel worthy. At least, that was how I lived my life when I was still very young and never knew what it was like to hate myself.
We all live for connection, but there's an obstacle called shame.
Shame = fear of disconnection.
"Is there something about me that if people know or see it they would think I'm not worthy of connection?" The feeling of "I'm not smart/thin/pretty/promoted enough."
But in order to let connection happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen.
People who have a strong sense of love and belonging have a strong sense of worthiness -- they think they are worthy of connection. These people have
1. courage = the ability to tell the story of who they are with all their heart; the courage to be imperfect
2. compassion = the ability to be kind to themseves because we can't practice compassion with others if you can't treat yourself kindly
3. authenticity = the willingness to let go of who they think they should be in order to be who they are
Connection is the result of the above three. Those people with a sense of worthiness embrace vulnerability and believe that what make them vulnerable make them beautiful. They know the necessity of the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees.
The world we live in is a vulnerable world. So we numb vulnerability with addiction and whatnot. But we can't selectively numb feelings without numbing other emotions so we end up numbing joy, gratitude, happiness, everything. We struggle to make the uncertain certain, to perfect ourselves and our children (when in fact, they are wired for struggle when they get here and our role is to tell them they are worthy of love and belonging despite their imperfection), and to pretend that what we do doesn't affect others.
Instead, what we should do is to let ourselves be deeply and vulnerably seen, which means
1. to love with our whole hearts even if there's no guarantee
2. to practice gratitude and lean into joy in those moments when we're wondering: Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this so passionately? Can I be this firece about this? -- just to be able to stop and instead of catastrophizing what might happen, to say I'm just so grateful, because to feel so vulnerable means I'm alive.
3. to believe that we're enough. Not when we're perfect, but just the way we are.
...So how do we believe that we're enough? I get it that if we feel worthy, we can allow ourselves to be vulnerable and hence find connection. But how do we believe we're worthy? This was the question I was left with.
The word worthiness hit me strong because the moment I heard it, I knew it was exactly what I lacked when I did what I most regret in my life: sleeping with someone I didn't even like. It was just once, but the regret has haunted me for years. I knew a guy was drooling over me, thought I could use him to make myself feel worthy, and ended up feeling used, probably because I let it happen when deep down my mind was actually saying no. It's the most foolish thing I've ever done, and one of the saddest stories I've ever known -- I was not brought up by parents who loved me only when I was perfect. They always, always loved me, no matter what, and still, I took their love for granted and thought I was not worthy of anyone else's love.
I don't think about it anymore, but when I do the pain is excruciating -- my imperfection regarding this mistake is almost unacceptable, though at some point I realized there was no other choice but to accept it and move on.
As a result, I no longer suffer to find the reason of my worthiness, but I still think it's impossible to love myself unconditionally. I mean, you can't just sleep all day, do whatever you like, and say, well, that's me, I love who I am! I know all I can do is to do what I can, keep doing what I must do to accomplish my dreams, however small or big they may be, and just do my best every day, because that's the only way for me to feel worthy. At least, that was how I lived my life when I was still very young and never knew what it was like to hate myself.
2014年5月5日月曜日
no need to give up
Where there's a will, there's a way
When I was around twenty, I was invited over to my friend's place where she homestayed for just over a year. The hostparents were a young couple with two little kids. They -- especially the father -- didn't hide his strong interest in me when we met. Knowing where I went to school and hearing my English (my friend was American), he seemed to see me as an ideal daughter he wished his own daughter to grow up to be like. When I said I wanted to become a fiction writer, he said it was もったいない meaning "You would be wasting your talents." It gave me a brief shock, because at that time, I was almost willing to give up everything else if I could support myself as a professional writer. It never occured to me that I would be wasting something -- losing other opportunities -- to spend my life (not necessarily my whole life but even part of it) on writing. During the following years, I thought I started seeing what he meant.
While studying to become a doctor can be sometimes tedious, I never feel like I'm wasting my time. If I only help one patient after I become a doctor, that probably wouldn't matter. I studied all this time, just for him. Writing and other artistic jobs, on the other hand, can be more difficult to measure their value. I still sometimes wonder if I'm just wasting my time when I practice my guitar for more than two hours. There's a limit to what you can do in a lifetime. Since you never know if you're going to be good enough, you might as well give up on art altogether unless that's all you can do, just like the father implied. Really?
I came across an inspiring interview today with Ryu Goto, a classical violinist who was known as a prodigy. Does he still play the violin because that's his only choice? No. He holds a Harvard degree as well as a black belt in karate. He tells us all that it's okay to be (overly) ambitious. You don't have to choose one thing and stick only to that (you can listen to the interview here though it's unfortunately in Japanese):
今の時代の我々は、夢を一つもギブアップしなくていい。ちゃんとプランニングをすると、後回しにしないといけないこともあるけれど、ギブアップはしなくていいんだと思う。夢はいろいろあって、どれ一つとしてあきらめたくなかったので、一つ一つこなしていくことにした。０．０１％でも前進していればいつかは夢にたどり着く。死ぬまでに夢を成し遂げることができるのかと疑問に思うこともあったけれど、今のテクノロジーの進歩を考えたら、まぁいいやと思った。夢は僕にとっては夢ではない。夢はいつか起きること。ただ起きるだけ。100％起きる。夢を信じきっているので、何があってもそれはすべて夢への過程。全体像を見ると、すべては肥やしになっている。何があっても前に進んでいる。＜中略＞意志さえあれば方法はあると考えて、時間はかかってもあきらめなくてもいいわけだから、とにかくいつかはそれが完成するので、それまで毎日ただ少しずつ頑張るだけ。
"A dream, to me, is not a dream. It's something that happens. No matter how long it takes -- some things you might have to put on the back burner for a long time -- but as long as you take one step at a time, it's eventually going to happen. You don't have to give up."
When I was around twenty, I was invited over to my friend's place where she homestayed for just over a year. The hostparents were a young couple with two little kids. They -- especially the father -- didn't hide his strong interest in me when we met. Knowing where I went to school and hearing my English (my friend was American), he seemed to see me as an ideal daughter he wished his own daughter to grow up to be like. When I said I wanted to become a fiction writer, he said it was もったいない meaning "You would be wasting your talents." It gave me a brief shock, because at that time, I was almost willing to give up everything else if I could support myself as a professional writer. It never occured to me that I would be wasting something -- losing other opportunities -- to spend my life (not necessarily my whole life but even part of it) on writing. During the following years, I thought I started seeing what he meant.
While studying to become a doctor can be sometimes tedious, I never feel like I'm wasting my time. If I only help one patient after I become a doctor, that probably wouldn't matter. I studied all this time, just for him. Writing and other artistic jobs, on the other hand, can be more difficult to measure their value. I still sometimes wonder if I'm just wasting my time when I practice my guitar for more than two hours. There's a limit to what you can do in a lifetime. Since you never know if you're going to be good enough, you might as well give up on art altogether unless that's all you can do, just like the father implied. Really?
I came across an inspiring interview today with Ryu Goto, a classical violinist who was known as a prodigy. Does he still play the violin because that's his only choice? No. He holds a Harvard degree as well as a black belt in karate. He tells us all that it's okay to be (overly) ambitious. You don't have to choose one thing and stick only to that (you can listen to the interview here though it's unfortunately in Japanese):
今の時代の我々は、夢を一つもギブアップしなくていい。ちゃんとプランニングをすると、後回しにしないといけないこともあるけれど、ギブアップはしなくていいんだと思う。夢はいろいろあって、どれ一つとしてあきらめたくなかったので、一つ一つこなしていくことにした。０．０１％でも前進していればいつかは夢にたどり着く。死ぬまでに夢を成し遂げることができるのかと疑問に思うこともあったけれど、今のテクノロジーの進歩を考えたら、まぁいいやと思った。夢は僕にとっては夢ではない。夢はいつか起きること。ただ起きるだけ。100％起きる。夢を信じきっているので、何があってもそれはすべて夢への過程。全体像を見ると、すべては肥やしになっている。何があっても前に進んでいる。＜中略＞意志さえあれば方法はあると考えて、時間はかかってもあきらめなくてもいいわけだから、とにかくいつかはそれが完成するので、それまで毎日ただ少しずつ頑張るだけ。
"A dream, to me, is not a dream. It's something that happens. No matter how long it takes -- some things you might have to put on the back burner for a long time -- but as long as you take one step at a time, it's eventually going to happen. You don't have to give up."
2014年4月27日日曜日
iron will
"That's not your duty. That's your ambition."
Tonight, I watched The Iron Lady, the movie about Margaret Thatcher. I thought its main focus would be on what she accomplished as a prime minister but it was more about her as also a mother and a wife -- a normal fragile human being with regrets and fears and pain.
The film surely tells us that her priority had always been public service. She always knew what the nation needed, and she had strong faith in what she was doing. No critisizm wavered her courage. She was always correct and brave and just perfect. Regret and fear seemed like the last thing she would feel. But as she suffers dementia and has conversations with her dead husband in her hallucinations, she feels the weight of the sacrifices she had made in order to pursue her career, and also remembers the pain she had to go through when resigning.
Earlier this evening, I had a call from a friend and during the conversation she told me what she felt about med students in general -- they had too much pride and were too cold and superficial. She had a problem with a certain guy in particular who tried to look good in front of everyone. I don't know him in person, but from what I heard from her, it seemed like he didn't have his own mind. He lacked confidence. He reminded me that not knowing what is truly important to you really makes your life complicated and painful.
Thatcher never lacked confidence. She knew what was important to her, to her nation and the people. She acted faithfully to her own principles and still, she faced (at least in the movie) the pain caused by her own choices. After all, being a prime minister was not her duty; it was her ambition. And as satisfied as she was while being in the position, she wonders what all the painful decision-making had been for when she nears the end of her life. All her past accomplishments seemed to fade away before her current regret towards her family (or husband in particular).
The Iron Lady reminded me of another movie about another female political leader -- The Lady (about Aung San Suu Kyi), and I think both women share the same kind of regrets resulting from their iron will. Correct decisions so often seem almost like a mistake in hindsight.
So life is painful either way -- with or without confidence and convictions. If one is destined to regret, probably anyone would rather regret a decision made according to his own principles. But if that means sacrificing the people he loves, perhaps not everyone can be as strong as the two women.
Tonight, I watched The Iron Lady, the movie about Margaret Thatcher. I thought its main focus would be on what she accomplished as a prime minister but it was more about her as also a mother and a wife -- a normal fragile human being with regrets and fears and pain.
The film surely tells us that her priority had always been public service. She always knew what the nation needed, and she had strong faith in what she was doing. No critisizm wavered her courage. She was always correct and brave and just perfect. Regret and fear seemed like the last thing she would feel. But as she suffers dementia and has conversations with her dead husband in her hallucinations, she feels the weight of the sacrifices she had made in order to pursue her career, and also remembers the pain she had to go through when resigning.
Earlier this evening, I had a call from a friend and during the conversation she told me what she felt about med students in general -- they had too much pride and were too cold and superficial. She had a problem with a certain guy in particular who tried to look good in front of everyone. I don't know him in person, but from what I heard from her, it seemed like he didn't have his own mind. He lacked confidence. He reminded me that not knowing what is truly important to you really makes your life complicated and painful.
Thatcher never lacked confidence. She knew what was important to her, to her nation and the people. She acted faithfully to her own principles and still, she faced (at least in the movie) the pain caused by her own choices. After all, being a prime minister was not her duty; it was her ambition. And as satisfied as she was while being in the position, she wonders what all the painful decision-making had been for when she nears the end of her life. All her past accomplishments seemed to fade away before her current regret towards her family (or husband in particular).
The Iron Lady reminded me of another movie about another female political leader -- The Lady (about Aung San Suu Kyi), and I think both women share the same kind of regrets resulting from their iron will. Correct decisions so often seem almost like a mistake in hindsight.
So life is painful either way -- with or without confidence and convictions. If one is destined to regret, probably anyone would rather regret a decision made according to his own principles. But if that means sacrificing the people he loves, perhaps not everyone can be as strong as the two women.
2014年4月19日土曜日
the aesthetics of life
...It was a work of art and it was beautiful because he alone knew of its existence and with his death it would at once cease to be.
- W. Somerset Maugham
April's half way gone and this is my first post of the month. The reason I haven't been writing is simply because I didn't have anything I wanted to write about -- probably because I was busy not only studying neurology but also practicing the guitar.
Surprisingly, this may be the first time I mention my guitar in this blog. Music, for the most part, has always been a big element in my life. The piano was the first thing I said I wanted to take lessons for. I was four years old then, and took lessons till seventeen. I never had any questions about it. It wasn't always fun but I did it because I liked it. I started the guitar a few years before I stopped taking piano lessons. I couldn't bring my piano with me when I moved away from home for university, so I mainly practiced the guitar from then on.
But I was never passionate about it as much as the piano. Maybe because I wasn't so passionate about music itself anymore by the time I graduated high school. Now that I think about it, the reason is pretty clear: I started playing the guitar under the influence of a friend whose music abilities kept reminding me of my own limitations. I just knew I could never be like her. It was not a matter of effort. I didn't have her ears. After ten years, I can now tell the chords if I hear a song, but I can never learn a whole guitar piece by ear. Nor do I have any creativity.
When I realized that, a question that had never bugged me started to raise its head: What's the whole point? If I can play Chopin's Ballad No.1, that's great, but a bunch of other people can play it. They would play it much better than me. So why go through the trouble of learning twenty pages of music? What do I gain? What do I create? What is there to be left if I die tomorrow?
I never put my question into words, but this feeling was probably what drove me away from music and pulled me towards writing instead. When I was writing, I was sometimes intoxicated with my words -- no matter how useless they were, I was creating something and they would still be there if I died tomorrow. I was looking for a meaning in life, meaning of my own existence, meaning for everything. I was almost breathing to explain why I was breathing.
Tonight, as I went through the music sheets with frustration, the same question popped in mind. More clearly than ever. Why do I have to play this when so many other people can do it better? Isn't it just another waste of time? And of course, this question leads me to the ultimate question: why am I living my life? So many people can do so many things better than me. What's the point in me doing it? Can I leave anything behind when I die?
I still have no answer. But right now I don't think it's important anyway. One day, the sun is going to burst and everything will disappear. Or at least, everything will cease to be the way it is today. Nothing is permanent. So what does it matter if I leave nothing behind? The obvious fact is that all we have is this moment. Who cares if a billion other people can play the guitar better than me? I pluck the strings because I want to. It fills my heart with joy and lets me appreciate the moment for what it is. No past, no future. No greed or anxiety. Isn't that enough?
Now I think the aesthetic nature of music also lies in that when the last note turns to silence, the whole piece disappears, leaving nothing solid behind, just like every moment of my life will cease to be with my last breath.
- W. Somerset Maugham
April's half way gone and this is my first post of the month. The reason I haven't been writing is simply because I didn't have anything I wanted to write about -- probably because I was busy not only studying neurology but also practicing the guitar.
Surprisingly, this may be the first time I mention my guitar in this blog. Music, for the most part, has always been a big element in my life. The piano was the first thing I said I wanted to take lessons for. I was four years old then, and took lessons till seventeen. I never had any questions about it. It wasn't always fun but I did it because I liked it. I started the guitar a few years before I stopped taking piano lessons. I couldn't bring my piano with me when I moved away from home for university, so I mainly practiced the guitar from then on.
But I was never passionate about it as much as the piano. Maybe because I wasn't so passionate about music itself anymore by the time I graduated high school. Now that I think about it, the reason is pretty clear: I started playing the guitar under the influence of a friend whose music abilities kept reminding me of my own limitations. I just knew I could never be like her. It was not a matter of effort. I didn't have her ears. After ten years, I can now tell the chords if I hear a song, but I can never learn a whole guitar piece by ear. Nor do I have any creativity.
When I realized that, a question that had never bugged me started to raise its head: What's the whole point? If I can play Chopin's Ballad No.1, that's great, but a bunch of other people can play it. They would play it much better than me. So why go through the trouble of learning twenty pages of music? What do I gain? What do I create? What is there to be left if I die tomorrow?
I never put my question into words, but this feeling was probably what drove me away from music and pulled me towards writing instead. When I was writing, I was sometimes intoxicated with my words -- no matter how useless they were, I was creating something and they would still be there if I died tomorrow. I was looking for a meaning in life, meaning of my own existence, meaning for everything. I was almost breathing to explain why I was breathing.
Tonight, as I went through the music sheets with frustration, the same question popped in mind. More clearly than ever. Why do I have to play this when so many other people can do it better? Isn't it just another waste of time? And of course, this question leads me to the ultimate question: why am I living my life? So many people can do so many things better than me. What's the point in me doing it? Can I leave anything behind when I die?
I still have no answer. But right now I don't think it's important anyway. One day, the sun is going to burst and everything will disappear. Or at least, everything will cease to be the way it is today. Nothing is permanent. So what does it matter if I leave nothing behind? The obvious fact is that all we have is this moment. Who cares if a billion other people can play the guitar better than me? I pluck the strings because I want to. It fills my heart with joy and lets me appreciate the moment for what it is. No past, no future. No greed or anxiety. Isn't that enough?
Now I think the aesthetic nature of music also lies in that when the last note turns to silence, the whole piece disappears, leaving nothing solid behind, just like every moment of my life will cease to be with my last breath.
2014年3月29日土曜日
mistakes done
"What do you really want?"
After two days of sewing blood vessels together under the microscope, I didn't feel like doing anything today so I watched a movie: The Words. My father had told me I would like it, and he was right.
The story is like looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror; it's about a writer (Clay) delivering a story about a writer (Rory) who stole a story from another writer (the old man).
When he is still young, the old man loses his daughter to illness, and the relationship between him and his wife starts to fall apart. He endures the lifetime pain by writing about it. He gives the writing to his wife to read but she ends up losing it. The old man loved the words he had written so much he had to end the relationship with his wife, the very person who had inspired him to write in the first place. He sees her once again years later with another man and their child and that's the end of his story until many more years later when he finds his words published under the name of another young man.
Rory, when he finds the story in an antique briefcase he had bought in Paris, is suddenly terrified that he will never become what he wants to be. The story hits him with such great power that he is forced to accept his limitations. After he meets the old man (the old man had followed him to tell him "the truth"), he wants to take his name off the book and "put everything right", but is told to live with the choice he has made. He stole a part of the old man's life; now he has to live with the pain, even if that destroys his most precious things. "We all make our choices. The hard part is living with them."
The ending suggests that Clay is Rory, but we never know. The movie ends almost abruptly with a female student (who Clay has invited over to his place) asking Clay what he really wants (when he tells her to leave soon after they start making out). I don't think it was only me who felt like being thrown into a deep well.
The theme is sort of the same as Crime and Punishment, but I could relate so much more to this story. Mistakes sometimes sting so badly. But you can't always make the right decision. Life comes with life changing mistakes you can't undo. Maybe the only thing that can make us feel better is that we're not alone. We all live with a bit of dark shadow in our hearts.
After two days of sewing blood vessels together under the microscope, I didn't feel like doing anything today so I watched a movie: The Words. My father had told me I would like it, and he was right.
The story is like looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror looking at someone in the mirror; it's about a writer (Clay) delivering a story about a writer (Rory) who stole a story from another writer (the old man).
When he is still young, the old man loses his daughter to illness, and the relationship between him and his wife starts to fall apart. He endures the lifetime pain by writing about it. He gives the writing to his wife to read but she ends up losing it. The old man loved the words he had written so much he had to end the relationship with his wife, the very person who had inspired him to write in the first place. He sees her once again years later with another man and their child and that's the end of his story until many more years later when he finds his words published under the name of another young man.
Rory, when he finds the story in an antique briefcase he had bought in Paris, is suddenly terrified that he will never become what he wants to be. The story hits him with such great power that he is forced to accept his limitations. After he meets the old man (the old man had followed him to tell him "the truth"), he wants to take his name off the book and "put everything right", but is told to live with the choice he has made. He stole a part of the old man's life; now he has to live with the pain, even if that destroys his most precious things. "We all make our choices. The hard part is living with them."
The ending suggests that Clay is Rory, but we never know. The movie ends almost abruptly with a female student (who Clay has invited over to his place) asking Clay what he really wants (when he tells her to leave soon after they start making out). I don't think it was only me who felt like being thrown into a deep well.
The theme is sort of the same as Crime and Punishment, but I could relate so much more to this story. Mistakes sometimes sting so badly. But you can't always make the right decision. Life comes with life changing mistakes you can't undo. Maybe the only thing that can make us feel better is that we're not alone. We all live with a bit of dark shadow in our hearts.
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