BGM: Ry Cooder - Paris, Texas
Today I attended the online meeting about autism. It was held only morning time because of the host's schedule. I remember that this group was made about 7 years ago today, and I feel thankful for the fact I have walked with this group together from the beginning. Without this group, I couldn't find any positive meanings of autism which I have to face during this life, and I also would get inside myself with throwing away any hopes and dreams. I think I would consider myself as an unhappy man and just stay looking at myself with a closed attitude, or a selfish attitude… this must sound too complicated. But if I try to think this with a realistic attitude, then it would suggest that this group gave me various chances of starting living in my group home, learning English, doing my work seriously. This group supports these things' base. I might be changed with this group, and also be able to “level up”.
One of the topics in this meeting was about a person's story about her activity as a job coach. About what did she learn from that and what she did to help others. TBH, she even talked about “my” story of working as one of the sauces of her story. I was slightly embarrassed with hers because she told us that my every day's effort (I might be able to say my “devotional” effort) was alive in my work. Bob Dylan has one of his masterpiece songs “The Time They Are-A Changin'”, and it exactly tells me a truth. Because once when the group was made, handicapped people couldn't work well in this town. I might have to admit that we all Japanese couldn't understand autism well in this whole country. My company also had a struggle about using the job coach, and finally they once denied me to use that system at all. We can be here after a long time from there, and it tells me that our life is not bad.
After that meeting, I went to Aeon and had lunch. Although I can't write with its detail, we were told by a member that his boss and he couldn't have a good relationship, therefore he got sick. I worried about him as a friend. He was an ex-hikikomori (the person who throws away any future and stays at his/her room), and now he tries to help other ex-hikikomori and their families as an activist with his experience. I heard his character lets other people's mind open, and I am also attracted certainly by his. He is a great friend of mine…this reminded me of the past days of mine that once I had no “great friends” in my life, and just spent the period as a heavy drinker with loneliness. Believing that I could live alone with no friends… and actually, at that time, I couldn't have any friends who were able to build friendship which could be kept on over five years. Therefore, we always broke up with a silly struggle… Now is really unbelievable because of those memories. Changing is not the time only, I guess. People changes certainly step by step.
After the lunch, I went back to my group home. I read Yoshio Kataoka's “Outside of Japanese language” and “Afterwords” at the same time. The discussion about the Gulf War by Kataoka at the beginning of “Outside of Japanese language” reminded me of the time when I was a teenager. Once, at that period, I imagined the outside of this countryside town, Shiso. The vast world as America, Tokyo, etc. The time when ordinary people did not use our internet…at then, I wanted to become a writer and translator, or a “Japanese business person” who can fight “whole 24 hours” (these words once became famous because of a TV commercial), a “global person” like Haruki Murakami. Now, looking around me, I could have made many friends in this town and on the internet. I am also getting improved expressing myself in English (I believe). These facts suggest the fact that “we can become greater”. People can change...and now, I might even be able to believe the “dreams come true”.
