(3-3) A Fall [ Autobiography of a 45-year-old 2016 ]
◆ Information
[ Autobiography of a 45-year-old ] is the title, but the original title is " Living Naturally, Dying Naturally: One Ordinary Person's Light Illuminating a Corner ". This autobiography is compiled in the magazine below. I would be happy if you could read it as well. and profile too...
Monthly magazine on human studies "Chichi"
A little while after I returned, there was a change of store managers. The new store manager who arrived seemed to find it difficult to follow in the footsteps of the previous manager, but whenever we were together during breaks or at other times, we often found common ground. Once, I talked about the Eighteen Histories and Sun Tzu, and later, the new store manager gifted me a one-year subscription to a magazine called "Chichi".
This "Chichi" is a self-improvement magazine based primarily on Eastern philosophy. In a word, it was about learning from the past to create the new, and many business owners, scholars, and religious figures contributed various articles on the principles of humanity from their respective positions and perspectives.
As I read "Chichi," the world of Eastern philosophy that I had been interested in expanded further, and I came to know new works by Masahiro Yasuoka and related books. I became fixated on the theme of "how should one live," broadly speaking, through the sincere attitude toward work I learned in "Chichi," interest in such management, and admiration for a profound human image.
Also, the new store manager gave me a book called "Shushin Kyojuroku / Shinzo Mori (Chichi Publishing)", and reading it made me think about the principles for living. And before I knew it, I was dreaming again of becoming a business owner and succeeding in life. Here, I remembered a phrase that had been on my mind at the time, Masahiro Yasuoka's " Knowledge, Insight, and Courageous Insight ", so I would like you to bear with me as it is a bit long.
Knowledge, Insight, and Courageous Insight
[ Katsugan Katsugaku / Masahiro Yasuoka From Knowledge, Insight, and Courageous Insight ]
We have important principles and rules when dealing with events that occur in daily life. These have also appeared many times in the literature of the ancients that I have introduced to you, and I have explained them each time, but in these times, conventional and mechanical knowledge and education are of no use.
Knowledge itself is not a force. Knowledge is linked to theory, but knowledge and theory can be manipulated if one has an ulterior motive; there is a famous saying, "Even a thief has three parts of reason." Also, in theory, there is theoretical struggle; for example, the theoretical struggle between the Soviet Union and Communist China is famous. While both claimed to be Marxist-Leninist, the two countries fought thoroughly. If you have an ulterior motive in your heart, you can attach any theory you want, and even if there is criticism from a third party, since they are a third party, the people involved will not accept such things. It never ends.
This is the same for nations, individuals, and families. Even within a family, it cannot be settled by the father, mother, son, and daughter arguing their own logic; it cannot be solved unless something more fundamental and solemn is brought in. In other words, theoretical struggle is useless after all, and it is no longer a matter of knowledge or theory.
I once spoke in this lecture about the important elements of the human spirit, and I stated that insight is more necessary than knowledge. Knowledge and insight may seem similar, but they are completely different. Knowledge can be obtained only through the shallow action of the cerebral cortex. You can obtain it just by entering school and listening to lectures, or even just by reading reference books. However, this does not become human belief or the power to act.Unless something more fundamental and authoritative is added to knowledge, knowledge is useless. If you ask what that is, it is insight.
People with various knowledge answer even about a single problem. However, that is only knowledge. But when you try to solve it when facing a situation,the judgment of "I will do this" or "it must be this way" comes out as the content of personality, experience, or the enlightenment gained from there. This is insight. Knowledge and insight are different in this way.
However, although insight is difficult in that sense, insight alone is not enough, and there is always opposition. In other words, the higher the insight, the more low-class people will oppose it. Therefore, in order to execute this,the knowledge and insight to execute while calmly eliminating various opposition and interference is called courageous insight. In other words, knowledge or insight with decisiveness and execution ability is courageous insight. Without this, even if you have good insight, you will end up indecisive.
Also, what kind of ideal you have in daily life, not just living aimlessly, but having one ideal or goal, this is called having " aspiration ". However, that cannot be temporary and must have permanence, so we express this with the word " integrity ". Also, when doing work, a crisp conclusion is necessary, and this is called " moderation ", and combined with the aforementioned integrity, the compound word " principles and integrity " is formed. In other words, a mere intellectual or office worker is not enough; a person with courageous insight and principles and integrity must emerge, or this difficult situation will not be saved.
At the time, for me in my early twenties, it was content that could only become "knowledge," but memory is a grateful thing, and looking back, it brings a different flavor. And I would like to believe that these memories will surely be effectively utilized in the present and the future.
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Business that conveys excitement
One day, one of my part-time job friends said to me, "I have a good story, why don't you come and listen to it once?" and I followed him to a seminar. What was happening at that venue was, roughly speaking, an invitation to a communication business that said, "Let's succeed in life by being useful to people with a water purifier that makes you healthy (in short, selling it)!"
Being young means having little experience and being completely lacking in consideration, so I barely thought about risks, only the good things flickered before my eyes, and before I knew it, I had jumped into that world. The idea was that I should first use the water purifier and then convey the excitement of it, but I had no money, so I borrowed money for the first time in my life to purchase that water purifier. Even though I wasn't working, the fact that money was coming into my hands caused an indescribable sense of guilt and disgust to well up, but by that time, the motivation to start this business outweighed that.
I noticed something immediately after starting that business. It was that the introducers and superiors were friends from a certain high school in Yokohama, and they were all people of the same age as me. Although we were the same age, I fell into a feeling of being forcibly subordinated just because they were my "ups." Phone calls in the middle of the night and sudden summonses piled up, and it seemed like it would affect my work until then. Gradually, my body became painful, and I lost room in my feelings.
Even so, because we were of the same generation, when we gathered, the clumsy high school graduates would have the most adult-like conversations they could, talking about how to succeed, sharing mismatched dreams, and actually being a disorganized crowd connected only by motivation.
That interaction was far from the Ito Hajime series, "Chichi," and the world of Masahiro Yasuoka that I had been reading until then, and it was completely thin in content. The things I had read until then... those, a certain kind of ideal, became the reason why my feelings could not keep up with the "up" group, and eventually, I became disgusted with the business itself. However, the organization hosting this business held self-improvement seminars to make the business successful, and the content was often useful to me, who was ignorant of the world.
What left a particularly strong impression on me was the phrase " The source of all results is oneself ". I learned various other things, but I still didn't get results, so it was like I had created debt for ineffective self-investment, and although I tried my best for about a year, I couldn't continue and left the business.
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What I realized when I hit a dead end
During this time, my part-time job and university became increasingly sloppy. Eventually, it led to dropping out of university the following year, and the training for my regular driver's license also became a rush at the last minute of the deadline. I eventually quit the job in Shinjuku that I had been so devoted to, and ended up moving from one part-time job to another at completely different companies. Because of that, my life living alone hit a dead end, and in the end, I had to return to my parents' home.
Looking back, I only had pointlessly grand "dreams" without gaining any "substance," and I turned a blind eye to my own hollow self. At the time, the best I could do to cover up the stench was to console myself by saying, "This shouldn't be happening..." and for a while, I spent my days in gloomy reflection. And all that remained for me were debts and a water purifier into which I had poured my money and time.
While spending my time this way, what I felt vividly was the realization that "I must firmly grasp 'substance'." Specifically, this meant being trusted and maintaining that trust. And I began to think that I had no choice but to keep my feet on the ground, one step at a time. However, in reality, I was still in the midst of my own inadequacy, having become nothing, and I was not putting any of that into practice.
The continuation is in the following article.
The previous article is...
The first article of this autobiography is...
Regarding this article
In October 2016, at the age of 45, I compiled the first half of my life into an autobiography. I titled it "Living Naturally, Dying Naturally: One Ordinary Person's Light Illuminating a Corner." This "Living naturally, dying naturally" is a phrase said to have been uttered by pre-war Prime Minister Koki Hirota to the Buddhist scholar and prison chaplain Shinsho Hanayama during the Tokyo Trials. In my early twenties, I was engrossed in many of Saburo Shiroyama's historical novels. I was particularly moved by "Rakujitsu Moyu (The Setting Sun Burns)," which features Koki Hirota as the protagonist, and I felt I saw true human strength in his figure as he fulfilled his duty by accepting his conviction without ever offering a self-defense. The title of my autobiography is an expression of my admiration for Koki Hirota, and I have set it for myself as a guiding principle until the day I pass away. The numbers in parentheses at the beginning of the article titles, such as "(1-1)," are the reference numbers for "
Living Naturally, Dying Naturally: One Ordinary Person's Light Illuminating a Corner." Thank you very much for reading this far. I would be happy if you would continue to accompany me. I sincerely wish you all the best.