Connecting just a little bit with the world, society, and people #32
Loneliness.
I should be used to being alone by now, but sometimes I feel it suddenly.
I have been a full-time homemaker for about eight years.
Now that my children go to school and kindergarten, I have more time to spend by myself.
It is both happy and lonely.
There is something I tend to think about at times like this.
“Am I a person who is not
part of society?”That is what I wonder.
If I worked, I feel like I could semi-forcibly
belong to society.
But among full-time homemakers, there are various circumstances, and some people cannot do that.
I am one of them.
Then,
is it impossible to connect with society?
If it is just a little,
if it is just a tiny bit,
I think I can connect.
For example, the little conversations
I have with other mothers and teachers at my child's kindergarten.
The casual exchanges
with the staff at the shops I frequent.
And these connections on Note as well.
It might be trivial.
But it is not zero.
That is how,
I connect, just a little bit at a time.
Back when I was a working professional.
While being swayed on a crowded train,
even though there were many people around me,
come to think of it, my heart was always alone.
At the company, I was busy working every day,
and I had the feeling that I was working as a cog in the machine of society.
Back then, even if it was painful,
I could think of myself as “a person in society.”
I certainly existed “within society.”
But in reality,
I might not have been
“a person in society.”
I was just a replaceable
cog in the machine.
What is a person in society?
I think that it is only through the connection of hearts between people
that one is truly a person in society.
It can be small,
but to interact with someone while sharing warmth.
Isn't that exactly
what it means to connect with people?
In our interactions with others,
a relationship where our hearts warm up just a little,
or where we warm someone else's heart.
In that way,
an interaction that feels like it has blood flowing through it.
Even in work interactions,
or in other interactions,
if there is warmth there,
I think I can become
“a person in society.”
If the relationship is inorganic
and lacks warmth,
it might just be
a mere part, just a cog turning
as it meshes with another cog.
In my interactions with people,
I will add just a little bit of warmth.
I will put myself out there.
Just like opening the front door and going outside,
I will take my heart outside, just a little.
That is how I will connect with society, little by little.
With the world, with society, and with people.
I want to connect, just a little bit at a time.
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