Author: Satoru Hirose

 

Accept contradiction.
矛盾を受け入れよう。

 

We all have contradiction in a sense.

I saw a business person told in public that having a growth mindset is essential to be a leader. It seems that he considers himself as a leader as well.

In short, a growth mindset is a belief that we can develop ourselves at any time. The opposite is a fixed mindset, a belief that all skills and talents are given.

One day, the same business person called someone “born genius”.

Now the question is, what kind of mindset does he have? Probably both. Although he thinks of himself as a leader who has a growth mindset, what he unconsciously says reveals his fixed mindset.

This is nothing special. We do the similar thing all the time. Binge eating while going on diet. Talking about teamwork while bullying someone. Focusing on efficiency while doing ineffective things. You name it.

We just need to find and accept our own contradiction. No need to blame ourselves. Accept it, figure out what we really want to do or be, have a plan and move forward.

Also we need to accept contradiction of others. We have no right to blame them. We human beings are all incomplete. That’s why a growth mindset has an important meaning.

 

 

Make every effort to just be yourself.
自分自身であるために、あらゆる努力をしよう。

 

“You need to study much harder than others to be better.”

My mother kept telling me. Since I was six or seven years old. She bought me many kinds of study materials although my family was struggling financially.

Thanks to my mother, I was the smartest kid in junior high school. But only on paper. Even when I got a perfect score, I struggled with self-doubt. I wouldn’t be recognized as a good kid if I didn’t get a perfect score. Probably my mother didn’t intend to make me feel that way, but that’s what I thought.

Right before I went to college, my mother was hospitalized. She couldn’t come back home since then.

I don’t know what my mother thought in hospital. My mother was unable to speak. But I saw her working hard on being alive although her disease was incurable. Between life and death, she worked really hard to just be herself — not even a daughter, a sister, a wife or a mother. I believe that she made it. Even if no one else recognized that.

After spending twenty-one years in a hospital bed, my mother passed away.

Then I quit trying to be better than someone else. No matter how hard I work on, there’s always someone who is better than me in this world. Instead I continue working hard to just be myself. Not to be like someone else.

Sometimes I still struggle with self-doubt, but it’s different from what I had before. Because my life is no longer conditional. The way my mother lived in a hospital bed is now my DNA.

 

 

Live a live time.
この時を生きよう。

 

Sitting in a wheelchair, he looked at me and said,

“Do you like what you are doing?”

I didn’t answer. Because I hated my job. My father might have noticed that.

He had stage 4 liver cancer at that time. None of my family knew that. But my father perhaps noticed that he couldn’t live longer.

He passed away four months after he asked me the question. I had no chance to answer. I couldn’t be even at my father’s bedside because of my shitty job.

My father’s life was full of ups and downs. As his son, I was a beneficiary at times and a victim at other times.

I loved and hated my father. I loved him because he tried his best to show me the world. I hated him because he brought so many troubles to our home.

He wanted to live his life to the fullest. Probably he thought he couldn’t make it. But for me, no matter what happened to him, he did his best to live the present moment to the fullest. He showed me the way. And because of that, I still respect and love him.

Today and every day, I will do my best to live the present moment to the fullest. At least I like what I am doing now.