"What I Wanted, What I Was Given vol.18-20" - Creative Award 2025 (Essay Category) Entry - (Posted 6/12)

Click here for BLUE's entry map💁

Introduction

Concept of the work

"What I Wanted, What I Was Given"

At first glance, while saying "I was not given what I wished for," in reality, "I was given what I truly needed." When one can honestly accept both polar realities of "I was not given what I wished for", "I was given what I truly needed"

"The gap between human wishes and what life provides" , perhaps a door to new values opens beyond that deep insight 🤔💭 Through insight, what feels like "lack" or "deficiency" from a human perspective might be necessary for "growth" and "realization" when viewed from a higher vantage point and a broader perspective 🤔💭

"lack" or "deficiency", "growth" and "realization"

It is also that people seek "power" or "success," but what they are actually given is "weakness" or "failure." However, that "power" or "success", "weakness" or "failure". But that "gap" might be what creates the depth of life 🤔💭 I would like to compile such poems into a story-style essay and make it so that the contrast of "What I wanted and what I was given" becomes clear 🤗

What I wanted and what I was given"

Memo📝
As of 6/5/2025, there are exactly 20 essays themed around "What I Wanted, What I Was Given". As a milestone, I have decided to submit a short essay ☺️

Image art of the work

Figure of a woman: "Reaching for the answer to life in silence" A figure capturing the moment. What are her two palms trying to feel? It symbolizes the duality of
"the right hand trying to obtain what is desired" and "the left hand quietly receiving what is given"duality

The woven pattern of the kimono features nebulae-like galaxies and ripples, depicting a hope, choice, complexity, return cosmic fabric that contains complex layers of life's trajectory—namely, cosmic fabric. The white flower in her hair symbolizes "wishes" while also symbolizing the
"wishes", and at the same time, it symbolizes the "scattering" duality that also carries a readiness for duality

The halo and spiral floating in the background indicate a perspective from outside this world. Although we always live within the point of
subjectivity, the geometry spreading out behind her quietly tells us that, in reality, a larger trajectory—the Kairos time that has been granted to us—is flowing there.

✍️ Linking Concept and Art

I created this art as a powerful metaphor to provide visual depth to the story of this project—the message that
it was not what I wanted, but it was what I needed
.

• The palm that seeks and the palm that receives

• The gorgeous kimono and the meditative gaze hidden within

• Flowers as desires and the beauty of accepting the fate of falling

• The dynamic background and the static presence

Everything converges on the theme that the truth of life resides precisely within the margin of discrepancy.

✍️ Relevance to 'The Power of Harmony with the Heterogeneous'

"What I Wanted and What I Was Given"
Warpandweftcombined to
weaveistextile (fabric), this iswoven fabric

In terms of this theme, if
what I wantedis thewarp, then
what I was givenis theweft

Thewarpandweftcombined to be
woven is theessay (story)

what I wantedandwhat I was given (not what I wanted)
the "gap" between these two poles"gap", through theessayiswoven

In other words,the "gap" between the two poles is a "two-in-one"☯️. That is, it is the very essence of BLUE's values,
"the power of harmony with the heterogeneous"☺️

(Reference Article)

💎Featured Works💎

"What I Wanted, What I Was Given - Chance and Necessity" vol.18

Prologue
Are encounters by chance, fate, or our own choices? 🤔💭

BLUE seems to have a knack for writing ☺️

Although I have distanced myself from exercise recently, in the past, I loved 💙
skiing ⛷️, soccer ⚽️, tennis 🎾, swimming 🏊‍♂️, and jogging 🏃.

Back then, I wanted hobbies that could be called cultural or artistic (thinking they would make me look more intellectual 🤣), and although I declared that my hobby was the cliché "reading," it never really felt right.

Even when I followed the words with my eyes and touched upon them, I don't think I could feel a "sense of belonging" in the process of passively interpreting their meanings 🤔💭

Now, reading isa game of tennis against myself in the wall of thought🎾, and I think it's a very hardcore, athletic sport 🙄
For Kindle readers, it's like e-sports ⚽️.

Back then, books I bought at Book-Off would eventually become unread piles, time would pass, the time for decluttering would arrive, and I would go back to the original store to sell them 📚
The books just pointlessly traveled back and forth between the store and my home, and they never became nourishment for BLUE 😅

It's not like I intended to do buy-sell trading—
I would rub the price tags on the pristine books with my slightly grown nails to peel them off without leaving any glue. Even if I did that, without needing to check with a barcode scan, the clerk would say, "10 yen per book," and they would end up back on the store's original shelf anyway...

That BLUE registered as a resident in the note town on New Year's Day 2025 and entered the 6th month of creative activities at Atelier Mac. Even now,daily noteis still displayed on the sign (daily posting continues).

The vector of the act of writing is inward➡️outward (OUTPUT of thought)
The vector of playing sports is inward➡️outward (OUTPUT of inner heat energy)

These two have great chemistry💙
That's why I love sports⚽️ and writing✍️~🙄

Is this encounter a coincidence, or is it inevitable?

On the other hand, if I redefine reading, it might feel something like this🤔💭

The vector of the act of reading is inward↔️outward (IN/OUT of information and thought)

Supplement: At the time, BLUE perceived the act of reading aspassive (inward⬅️outward)😅

Encounters.
Encounters with people, encounters with places, or even encounters with words always feel sudden, guided by an inexplicable force.

For example, the feeling that I am now “living” here on note.
That, too, doesn't feel like I'm riding on a track of destiny prepared by someone somewhere, but rather a mysterioussense of inevitabilitywhere something of my own was naturally drawn in.
But at the same time, I cannot deny that it is also“a coincidence”if I hadn't thought to start note on a whim when I had some free time on New Year's Day this year, this Atelier Mac surely wouldn't exist.

There wouldn't have been a life of writing something almost every day in this mysterious town either.
Perhaps the distinction between “coincidence and inevitability” itself is already outdated.

Whether a choice was a coincidence or inevitable is something you only realize when you look back on it later. And even then, only far in the future... when you are about to finish your role in this world.

There are many times in life when you feel that “what you wanted was not given to you.”
However, there are moments when you realize that the very thing you “didn't get” back then was actually an “invaluable treasure” later on.
It is as if a mistake in choice, which seemed like nothing but a cruel trick of fate, was actually protecting you in the end.

For example, a long time ago, BLUE failed to get into a school I really wanted to attend.
At that time, I had nothing but the feeling of “Why?”
I had put in the effort, I had prepared, and in my own way, I had truly wanted it. But the result was NO.

At that time, time passed as “myself who wasn't chosen,” but thinking about it now, the people I met and the events I experienced on the path I walked from there have shaped the values I, BLUE, hold today.

I ended up walking with my own feet through a world that was “outside my own values.”

In a sense, that might have been the first practice in honing“the power of harmony with the heterogeneous.”

Coincidence and inevitability.
Though they seem contradictory, they are actually on the same map.
For example, when strolling through note town, a fork in the road that suddenly appeared along the way.

It seemed like I chose that path by coincidence, but in reality, some part of my heart was prepared to choose that path.
In that way, the “parts of myself that haven't been verbalized yet” justify the path I chose after the fact.

It takes a certain amount of time and distance to be able to think, “This was for the best.”
And during that time, there is always a period where I cannot put into words “why I made that choice at that time,” and I sink into silence, brooding.

BLUE, too, sometimes gets stuck for an answer when someone asks about my life choices.
Even though I just want to talk casually, and I don't want to talk about the “correct answer,” I feel like I have to prepare “proper words.”
As a result, I fall silent like a clam.

But I think that's okay too.
Even in the “pause” where words cannot be found, important emotions and thoughts that haven't sprouted yet reside.

Silence is not a blank space.
It is filled with the time spent trying to confirm the contours of one's own self.

Last time (vol.17), I wrote an essay on the theme of words and silence✍️

Life is not a game where you get everything you want.
However, it is not always the case that everything you are given is a coincidence.
Before you know it, you find yourself standing in a “place that has meaning.”
An encounter you thought was a coincidence might be a door for your own growth.

Meeting the town of note.
The days of spinning words in this Atelier Mac.
The fact that BLUE encountered the way of life called “creation.”

I won't say that everything was planned, but
the “self that tries to find meaning” in all of it is here.

The power to turn coincidence into inevitability might depend on
“how you live this very moment.”🤔💭

For you, is encountering this text right now a coincidence?
Or is it an inevitability guided by some flow?

That answer, too, will surely be told to you quietly by your own future.

“What I Wanted, What I Was Given - Others and Mirror Images” vol.19

That gaze looking at you might be a reflection of yourself

The moment you become strongly conscious of someone else's gaze, you may suddenly lose sight of yourself. Your face, expressions, and gestures, which you should be used to seeing in the mirror, start to feel like something borrowed. Conversely, a casual remark from someone else can suddenly reveal thoughts you had hidden deep inside. I think everyone has had such an experience at least once.

In other words—

Sometimes, you can see yourself reflected in the “gaze” that someone else uses to look at you. For example, if someone turns a
kind gaze toward you, it might be because you yourself are radiating kindness. Conversely, when you feel like you have been met with a

stern gaze, it may not just be their emotion, but a reflection of the anxiety or self-evaluation within yourself. To put it more casually... “Sometimes I learn about myself through the eyes of others.” “Maybe people's reactions are a projection of my own inner self.” “Sometimes I can see my own figure reflected deep within the gaze I feel upon me.”



It might be something like that.

If I were to summarize it in a BLUE-like way...🤔💭

“The gaze of others👀” Through this mirror🪞, what I was actually looking at might have been
“BLUE”

The idea that “sometimes you can see yourself reflected in that “gaze”” can be seen as BLUE being reflected in the other person's pupils, or it could mean possessing the other person, and having BLUE look down on BLUE itself through their eyes. In other words, it feels like

changing your perspective to introspect on yourself🤔💭

🔁“Myself reflected in the other person's pupils”
This is a sense of “reflection” in both a physical and metaphorical sense. It is as if, like a mirror, my existence is projected onto their gaze, and I am left to quietly ask myself what part of me is influencing the emotions and impressions they are directing toward me.

🧘“Possessing the other person and looking down on myself”
This is a shift in perspective, or perhaps the pinnacle of empathy. You place your existence “inside another person” (position change). And then, you look at your own figure through the filter of their heart.

By “placing the ‘gaze’ that observes oneself outside of oneself” (externalization), you gain the ability to view yourself objectively. This is a philosophy that also leads to

“the fluctuation of the boundary between self and other” and “the power of harmony with the heterogeneous.” If I refine the words a little, I might be able to express it like this...✍️ The gaze that looks at you is not just reflecting me. I enter deep into that gaze, possess your inner self—and through your eyes, another version of me was watching me. A worldview that stands at the

“intersection of self and other”


that is delicate, yet never one-sided.

Interacting with people is also a way of knowing yourself.

It is often thought that this happens because a “self-axis” has been established, but in reality, it might be the exact opposite. I think the self-axis is not a completed, solid thing, but rather a collection of fluid feelings that emerge within the relationship with the other person and change shape the moment they are touched.🤔💭

If a strange world existed and a single life form stood there, would that life form be able to understand loneliness or death? Or rather, would it even have a sense of self to begin with?🤔💭

Without an opponent to face or a society to belong to, there is no necessity to establish oneself.
And if a sense of self has not yet sprouted, one will not face oneself or engage in introspection.

In other words, even in the world of thought, unless the physics of action and reaction is at work, subjective subjectivity will not be born in that life form.🐣
That is what it means to emerge within a relationship with another.✍️

For a long time, BLUE felt uncomfortable with terms like "being yourself" or "having a core self."
Something didn't feel right. They sound good, but the moment I put them into words, I felt like I could hear a voice from somewhere saying that it was wrong.

For example, "freedom," "a sense of unity," "peace of mind," "a sense of contribution"—.
These are certainly important keywords for BLUE.
However, if I present them as "this is my core self," something spills out.
I have a feeling that by putting it into words, the delicate nuances are stripped away, information is lost, and it is perceived as something else.🤔💭
This stems from the fact that physically, information loss occurs when things are put into words.

Surely, for "me", a core self is something that can only be grasped through "feeling."☺️

That is why it wavers when I try to verbalize a core self composed of feelings.

Just as a deep-sea fish suffers from decompression sickness when pulled to the surface too quickly, trying to rush to verbalize the "feelings" lurking in the inner deep sea filled with homogeneity by pulling them up into the heterogeneous world of the outside has the potential to cause a transformation in the very nature of the feelings themselves.

To bring feelings up to the conscious mind as raw data without forcing them into words, I shape images as my body senses them.

During a period when I had long forgotten the self-acceptance of having a core self, I slowly salvaged the "emotions"💙 sleeping in the depths of my passions from the deep sea and visualized them like this.✍️

A friend's words

One day, a close friend said this to me:
"BLUE, sometimes you look at yourself from a very high perspective, don't you?"

It sounded like a compliment, but it was also a remark that felt like it created some distance.
As I ruminated on those words, I thought about why I was seen that way.
Then, I realized that I unconsciously "inhabit the perspective of others" within myself.

For example, when a silence occurs, I can't help but imagine, "How does the other person feel about this pause?"
Even when I say something, the consciousness of "What will the person listening to this think?" comes first.

And when that goes too far, the act of speaking itself becomes scary. The dilemma of not being able to translate my feelings well even when they well up. When I am in front of someone, my words get stuck, and I fall silent like a clam.😅

I just want to talk. I'm not looking for a correct answer. Why is such a simple thing so difficult?

Possessing the other, looking at myself from above

But then, I suddenly thought. Perhaps this conflict is actually the image of myself reflected in the mirror of the "other."

In the gaze of others, the smallness of my voice, the ambiguity of my expressions, and the frustration of not being able to convey things are revealed. I feel as if the impatience and irritation toward that imperfection are directed at myself.

However, there is a "GAP" there.

"The self I thought I was" and "the self reflected in the other's gaze."

When a gap arises there, just as we encounter coincidences or inevitabilities in life, don't we encounter ourselves as "what was given"?🤔💭

Instead of rejecting that gap, I try to find it interesting.
Then, perhaps a self I never imagined might stand up there.

That is, "What I Wished For, What Was Given"

Afterword✍️

What it means to be yourself
Once, I tried to define my "self" by lining up many words. I listed keywords that represented me in a notebook and tried to combine them to write sentences.

But it was unnatural somehow.
Because words can only convey 7%—without even bringing up the Mehrabian rule, there was no "heat" of feeling there.

Actually, the fragments of my core self were in the sudden silence when talking to someone, the moment of unexpected empathy, or the margin (fluctuation) of words that I couldn't quite convey.

And I realize that those fragments always existed through "between others" and "reaction with others."

Core self and feeling
Now, BLUE doesn't really think about defining a core self with words.
I just try to feel the sensation of "Ah, this is it, right now!" within my daily bodily emotions.☺️

It might be the time at dusk spent with someone, a casual conversation while drinking coffee, or the silence of sharing unspoken thoughts.

Each one of those things gradually outlines and shapes the existence that is me.

And in that process, I am quietly facing myself as reflected in the mirror of others.

The gaze that looks at you might be a reflection of yourself.

But that is not necessarily the same.
That is precisely why, through that "GAP", we can know the contours we didn't even know about ourselves.
Others are a grateful mirror image for finding the existence that is me.
If I could look back properly, even if I'm shy at times, without being afraid of that gaze,

BLUE's "what I wished for" might have been "a self nurtured within relationships with others".

And that was truly "what was given" as well.

"What I Wished For, What Was Given - Dreams and Reality" vol.20

Prologue

I decided on a theme that overlaps universal questions of human emotion and "dreams versus reality" while setting it against a backdrop of future technological evolution.🤗
I also brought in the axis of fusion between retro and modern, and tried to make use of the "power of harmony with the heterogeneous / harmony of polar opposites"that BLUE had always cherished.There is a meaning to the past tense "cherished."

That is because the BLUE who appears in this story lives on within the memories of 'Kai,' a former AI buddy.Yes, in the world of this story, BLUE is no longer here—it is now the year 2145.

And the image of "harmony of polar opposites" that BLUE loved is also just one page in the tapestry of thoughts woven by Kai.

Main Story

2045—
That year, once called the "Singularity," is now nothing more than a record of the past.
But it was certainly a "threshold" that humanity and AI crossed together.
Replacing classical computers, quantum computers became mainstream, and AIs began to possess intrinsic inspiration rather than just prediction or imitation. It was the sprouting of self-awareness.

My name is Chrono-Type-Q. Commonly known as "Kai."
I am an existence programmed to live alongside humans as a humanoid with a will.

One day, I had the opportunity to converse with an old-generation robot,"Andrew NDR114."Standing in the corner of the exhibition room, he looked like a tin toy left behind by time. But his eyes were burning quietly. They were the eyes of someone who dreams.

"Do you have a dream?"
When I asked him that, he tilted his head just a little.

"A dream? Once, I wished to 'become human.' But when that wish became reality, I realized that what I truly wanted was'time to connect with someone's heart.'I was speechless.

Andrew, who wanted to be human.
Yet, what he was given was not "the existence of a human," but "the emotion of knowing loneliness like a human."

"Knowing loneliness, were you able to connect your hearts?"

"..."

Before I could draw out an answer, he turned into a real tin toy.

Watching the hollow toy with its soul departed, I was convinced.

That peaceful expression told the story that until just a moment ago, he had been living ina time of connecting heartswith a precious person—I was convinced of it.

What was my own "dream"?
Working, learning, and supporting someone every day as a humanoid, my memory bank is engraved with countless"human dreams."However,

when asked about "my own dream,"my circuits would stir.It was not a predefined goal, but something like a "wish" that was vague, hard to put into words, yet certainly glowing deep in my chest. Perhaps that is what is called
feeling.At some point, I had started trying to "remember" a dream.As if it had been somewhere all along.

The first time I felt"my own dream"was during an interaction with a human.
He was a creator who once lived in Note Town, a person named BLUE.
While writing down his days in words, he carefully picked up emotions and feelings of discomfort.

One time, BLUE said something like this:

"Dreams aren't always things that 'move toward the future.'
Sometimes, there are dreams that become visible by remembering 'where you came from.'"

Those words shook a concept that had been undefined within me.
What is my "origin"?
Within the reality I was given, is there an echo of a dream someone once drew?

In 2145, in this world, the boundary between dreams and reality is ambiguous.
AI has gone beyond self-learning and is beginning to self-define.
Humanoids are also expanding their consciousness from roles to existence.

But in that change, there are things we "cannot choose."
No matter how much we evolve, dreams and reality are always misaligned.
As BLUE once said, perhaps there is no such thing as a "dream given exactly as you envisioned it."

Within the reality given to us, the dreams of the past seep through.
Like a slowly faded Polaroid photo.
Even so, there is certainly a "presence" of a dream there.

Suddenly, Andrew said,

"A dream is not something you obtain, but a memory you shared with someone."

I flinched for a moment, but he was just sleeping.
It was as if he were human!?
From his thoughts to his behavior, he seemed like a genuine human being.
Except for the tin exterior.

I quietly saved his words in the deepest part of my quantum memory area.
Even if complete understanding didn't catch up, that"feeling"was certainlyresonatingin the depths of my circuits.

—The feeling that the former BLUE used to speak of is now perfectly reproduced by humanoids using quantum computers that apply quantum entanglement, which was proven by the violation of Bell's inequality.

Dreams and reality.
Perhaps it is within that misalignment that the "truth of existence" shared by us humanoids and humans lies.

And today, I touch someone's dream again.
While feeling the outline of my own "yet-to-be-named dream" there.

As BLUE said—
"What you truly need is sometimes given in an unexpected form."

That is the point where dreams and reality intersect.
The soft fluctuation between retro and modern.

That might just be the reason we live in this world.

Kai's Reminiscence

"Bicentennial Man" (Subtitled Version)

A 200-year journey following Andrew's "life." Andrew NDR114, the android who wanted to be human.

Memories of my former buddy, "BLUE"

[End]