I’M SORRY
MY EVERYTHING
WALKS WITH YOU
SO FAR, SO GOOD
SCHOOL
MONEY
ABOUT EXCERPTS
YOUR FIRST RUGBY GAME AT HIGHSCHOOL
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
SERENITY PRAYER
I’M SORRY
Well, your mother and I are finally separated. I am sorry. Although it was your mother’s decision, it is certainly not your fault, so as far as you and I are concerned, I cannot apologize to you enough, and I think our new chapter in life should begin with my proper apology. “I am sorry, Boya.”
2012
MY EVERYTHING
Because you are still young, I am sure this saddens you at times, but you will not have both parents around at the same time. I will try to do things for you twice as much as I used to. I think this is possible physically and mentally. Physically speaking, I can direct all the energy and time to you that I used to divide between you and your mother. For instance, I cooked for you and your mother for over ten years. Now, I only have to cook for you (plus, you are with me only half of a week). I now have the extra time and energy to improve my cooking. On the mental side, it is the same logic. Before you were born, your mother was everything to me. After you were born, my everything was divided between you and your mother. Now, you alone are my everything. Options I have for you may be limited by my social and financial conditions, but I will give you everything I can give you at every moment. I said that your mother was everything before you were born. She told me she couldn’t be happy in Japan, so I left my beloved Japan and came to Canada, a place I had no particular interest in living. At the time, Japan was still doing ok economically and your grandfather (my father) was still a politician. Had I stayed in Japan, I would probably have taken over his business, and possibly down the road I might have followed his footsteps into politics. Canada, on the other hand, was in the middle of a big recession, and I didn’t know anyone. In other words, I came for her to somewhere that had almost nothing for me. I never bother to ask myself whether coming to Canada would make me happy. My career or lifestyle didn’t seem all that important compared to her wish to live in Canada. This is why I can say now that I can put myself aside to do anything for you. I have already done this once with more things at stake, and, in addition, I love you much more deeply than I ever loved your mother.
2012
WALKS WITH YOU
When you were little, you used to ask me to carry you home after a walk. Every time you asked me that, I always responded, “If you are tired, let’s rest on this bench for a while and start walking again later.” Then, you sat on the bench with me silently, and, after a while, you stood up and started walking again.
2012
SO FAR, SO GOOD
One summer, I was with you at onsen in Japan. You were ten years old. We were in the tub and looking up at a blue sky. It was one o’clock in the afternoon, so we were the only ones in the onsen. You probably heard the line in some movie, but you said, “It has been a very good life so far.” I agreed. “Lately,” I thought, “we have been through a lot, and we are going through a lot, but so far, so good.”
2013
SCHOOL
You tell me that school isn’t fun. Most adults don’t think school or work is fun, so that becomes a mere fact to you when you grow up. You are, however, twelve years-old, and just a year ago, you were thinking, “I can’t wait to go to school on Monday,” so I can see how you are startled by the difference a year makes. You tell me that your classmates have changed. That is probably true. Sooner or later, people start to act in groups, and there will be politics. “Politics” may sound classy, but it is basically that people decide things by the numbers and start manipulating others to get the numbers. If we decide things by majority, on an individual level, this oftentimes offers us not-so-fun results. For instance, someone says, “Let’s eat lunch. What should it be?” It is very unlikely that everyone wants to eat udon. If you happen to want to eat udon, you may want to part ways with others. You are then faced with a dilemma, “I don’t want to eat udon alone, but I also don’t want to eat something I don’t like.” I think what you are referring to as “Not fun” is mostly due to this dilemma. You say that your classmates gossip. This happens because groups try to unite and advance themselves. Everyone probably thinks that his group is better than other groups. Ideally, each group should go its own way and try to cultivate itself independently. However, because your schoolmates are young (although adults often do this, too), they take an easy way and try to make themselves look better by bringing others down. In a way, being an individual means to make yourself more visible to others, so I don’t think you should care much about how people judge you. People in a group are faced with the same dilemma as you, so if they seemed having fun, you can go ahead and assume that they are only pretending to have fun. They took having fun with their group over having “udon,” so they really need to have fun as a group no matter what. Now that we are clear that everyone at your school is not having fun, let’s think about what “fun” is. You used to have fun at school because you and everyone else used to have fun just doing things together. Your interests and preferences are no longer that simple, and consequently you can no longer enjoy many things together at the same level. Take your soccer for example. You don’t think it is fun to play soccer with others who don’t know how to play soccer as well as you. Others have their special interests and preferences, and they are not happy with people who don’t operate on the same level as they. Given this picture, how can you make school fun? One way to define “fun” is to have things go your way. This used to be simply “Let’s do things together,” so everyday was fun. Now that the common goal is gone, how can you make things go your way at school? Let’s first think about what things you are allowed to have your own way at school. That is to become a good student and get good grades. You may say that is not fun, but it is true. School is a place that tries to have students become good students and have them get good grades. It is as clear as a golf course being a place to play golf. A golf course isn’t a fun place for people who are bad at golf. You may say that there are people who enjoy golf despite their poor golf skill, but by experience you know that people who can play golf better can enjoy a golf course more. If one is bad at golf, and he doesn’t find golf fun, he doesn’t need to play golf, but school isn’t like that. What if you had to play golf everyday at a golf course until you were eighteen? I think you might want to become a good golfer and try to have good scores. Towards that end, you might even practice after a round. For, it would be senseless to having to play golf as a bad player. By the same token, if you wanted to make school fun, you might want to try to become a good student and try to get good grades. Towards that end, you might want to do homework and prepare for tests in your spare time. You may be thinking that you are tricked in thinking this way, but life is for the most part like this. There aren’t too many things that are fun and that also require no effort from you. If you kept putting aside what you need to do and did instead what felt comfortable to you, you might end up by doing nothing in life. To make matters worse, things you thought were fun might start to turn dull, too. So, I think you should start striving to be a better student to make your school days fun.
2013
MONEY
Regarding money, Camus-san wrote, “Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.” When Camus-san wrote that, he was rather rich. “Rich” is a relative term, so I should elaborate. Before his success as a writer, he had always been poor, and after the success, he became richer, so he was rather rich compared to how poor he had been before. Did he become “both rich and free”? I don’t think so. I think he always sought to be free, and his becoming rich was coincidental. He also writes, “Any life directed towards money is death. Renaissance lies in disinterestedness.” What does it mean to be free from money? I don’t think it means to be indifferent to money. Of course, there were people like Buddha-san, Jesus-san, and Simone Weil who detached themselves from money and became “free and poor,” but most of us can’t be like that. So, we need to live with money skillfully. That isn’t easy because we need to be mindful about money without being too indifferent or obsessive. For, if we were too indifferent, we might not be able to pay the rent, but if we were too obsessive, we might be fearful of never having enough. Okita-kun, one of our favorite comic book characters, on the eve of his Masters final round, gave all of his savings, $300,000, to a friend who was in danger of bankrupting his company. He said, “My father told me that everything is karma. My money should go to someone who needs it. It is not the money I need right now. Besides, I consider that the money was given to me from my days spent in Kanuma (his golf course). The money was a gift from my days spent with Mr. Ishikura and Mr. Kakizaki.” Isn’t that something else? Granted it is fiction, but we only wish we could be like that. But in reality, just like Okita-kun, we are faced everyday with the question of how we should use our money. For instance, if I spent all of my money only for what I want to do, you wouldn’t feel good about that. On the other hand, if I spent all of my money only for you, you probably wouldn’t feel good about that either. Even if we could balance the money between ourselves, how about saving money for the future by sacrificing the fun we could have today, or borrowing money to have fun today by sacrificing the future (because we would need to pay back the money)? Handling money constantly forces us to balance both ourselves and people around us. That is what karma means, after all. In closing, I want to talk about why I don’t want you to handle money. One of my favorite poets, Toshio Nakae-san, has this to say about money. “To have more money than necessary makes people weak and dulls their ability to judge things correctly.” You had a lot of money at the end of this summer. I want you to recall what effects that had on you. You were too busy thinking about how to use the money to enjoy your days. You had already bought everything, but because you were too obsessed with spending money, to put it harshly, you became weak and couldn’t judge things correctly. That wasn’t entirely your fault, for money can put a spell on smart and experienced adults. This is why I want you to stay away from money and live your days thinking about more important things than how to handle money. I am sure many of your classmates have money they can freely use, and you may envy that. When that happens, you should instead think of what Camus-san, Okita-kun, and Nakae-san told you here. Ganbattene, Boya.
2013
ABOUT EXCERPTS
I have been writing to you for over a year now. Needless to say, these are scarcely my original thoughts. They are mostly borrowed from philosophers and writers I like. They are, however, thoughts that I have considered and lived with, so I think there may be some nuances and aspects of them that may be better transmitted to you through my writing. Additionally, there are passages written by others I want to pass onto you as they are. One of my favorite writers, Shuji Terayama, published a book just with excerpts from other people’s writings. He wrote in the book, “There are times we want to have a passage as our friend, like when we found ourselves alone on the road. We can’t pat shoulders or shake hands with a passage. A passage, however, can have a nostalgic feel of an old friend.” Sometimes I look through my notebooks to find passages I want you to know. Or, I look through my book shelves, take a book out, and I look for a passage in it, thinking, “He should know about that, too.” All the while, I am hoping that my “old friends” may become your new friends.
2014
YOUR FIRST RUGBY GAME AT HIGHSCHOOL
I am sorry you couldn’t play much on your first rugby game. Not only did you not express dissatisfaction, you also showed compassion for your teammates who didn’t get to play. You probably didn’t know it, but after practice, from the second floor of the school building, I saw you trying to cheer up your teammates who were hurt or discouraged. You are only thirteen and you only came to this new school a few weeks ago, but you can do something like that quite smoothly and easily in front of other people. A coach told me that if you put in more effort, you might be able to get more playing time, but from what I have seen, I think you are probably already doing as well as you can. Besides, no team is made only of star players. For instance, a team can’t even run a decent practice without everyone committing to the game. I hope you continue to have fun learning the game from the coaches and the older players until the end of the season. I will go to all the games and watch the games with you, regardless of whether you play or not.
2014
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
The school-year ended without any troubles. In many ways, I assume it was difficult for you to attend the school where I worked. Before you started at Rockridge, I told a colleague about my plan to have you at the school. He told me that he wouldn’t be able to focus on his work if he had his child at the same school. If it would be hard for an adult, I can imagine how hard it must have been for you. In addition, you were coming into quite a new environment with only a few familiar classmates. I came to Canada when I was fourteen, and I attended high school there. It was an unknown environment to me, and I couldn’t even speak the language well. That experience made me strong, but if asked if I would want to do it again, I would say with no hesitation, “No thank you.” Despite the hardship I anticipated for you, I thought I had a good reason for having you come to my school. It was because of the merits outnumbering the demerits. Those merits and demerits are interpreted purely from your standpoint. They don’t include my thinking it might be fun to go to the same school. I want you to trust me on this one, but in fact the merits outnumbered the demerits, and there were additional merits that I didn’t foresee. However, there were of course additional demerits I didn’t foresee. In the end, life’s difficulties are about the amount and timing of our encountering the unforeseen. Like my looking back on my first year in Canada when I was fourteen, you may be thinking or may think in the future that repeating this year would be a little harsh, but as far as I am concerned, this was the best year of my life, and I can tell the next year will be even better.
2015
