At last, my 49th birthday had come. This morning, I noticed many friends (yes, literally MANY friends!) had sent intimate celebration messages to me on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Discord. It was very, very unbelievable because I can still remember my childhood memories when I had been hated by every classmate. As a child, it could mean that the whole world itself had been an enemy for me. From my viewpoint, what could I have changed? At least, I have been an introverted bookworm kid since my childhood, but the world has changed its attitude toward me. Am I wrong?
When I was a kid, in an elementary school teachers had a birthday party for every kid. And also, when my birthday came every classmate gave me a message card, and I opened it to read. they had written in it as "Tatsuro Kun has no good point at all". I can still remember it as a tiny, slight pain. Yes, it can happen in any old-school life... but anyway, that memory helped me make this kind of "crooked" personality.
This morning, even though I had gone to the library and borrowed a provoking book "Don't Look Left" by Atef Abu Saif, I couldn't concentrate on reading because my mind had been too moved by those celebration messages... On LINE, my job coach and real friends sent me their great messages too. What should I have done to respond to them? All I could do was just to show how I was feeling grateful to them (a friend even wrote to me "Thank you for being in this world"!).
A friend of mine in the Kyushu area sent me a celebration message on WhatsApp, and I shared a piece of info about "Don't Look Left" with him. He told me about the relationship between the Gaza area, Israel, and Japan. As you can see easily, this topic must be really sensitive so I just should try to learn as diligently as possible. However, at least when I was a heavy drinker and had thrown away all hope in my mind completely, I had been haunted by a certain nihilism therefore this kind of topic wouldn't attract me. Even now, I guess that this life might have no meaning at all. But whether it can be true or not, this curiosity or this interest in my mind seems to go forward almost endlessly. Life goes on...
