Comfort Can Be a 'Poison': Leaving the Chaos of Vancouver for the Crucible of Toronto

1. The 'Library Dweller' and the Taste of Church Curry

During the second half of my time in Vancouver, I literally became a 'library dweller.' My targets were a TOEFL score and a ticket to college. I spent my days from morning till night holed up in the public library, battling with vocabulary books.

But you know, I still had no money. There was a limit to the meals I could get from my rich Chinese roommate. That was when a local friend told me about the 'church free meals.'

They were surprisingly delicious. It was a stew, similar to curry, boiled in a large stockpot. The scent of spices tickled my nose and warmed my chilled body. The people gathering at the church were diverse, ranging from poor international students like me to locals with complicated pasts, and even men who were practically homeless.

Everyone was living desperately. The act of 'eating for free' is something that feels a bit shameful in Japan. But there, it was affirmed as a 'legitimate right to survive.' 'Are you studying hard? Make sure you eat well,' said the volunteer lady with a smile as she served me. That taste of curry became a lifelong lesson for me: 'Survival is not a shame. It is noble to cling to your goals, even if you have to drink muddy water to do it.'

This is something that applies to people in their 40s today, too. Pride might get in the way, and you might find yourself unable to ask anyone for help. There might be times like that. But you know, when you are truly starting something new, you should just throw your pride into that church pot for a while.

2. The Library Philosopher: The Man Building a Time Machine

When you keep going to the library, you have strange encounters. Near the seat I always took, there was a mysterious middle-aged man who spread out the same tattered notebook every day, scribbling down complex mathematical formulas and diagrams.

One day, when I closed my vocabulary book and sighed, our eyes met. We started talking by chance, and what he said with a serious face was shocking.

I am currently working on inventing a time machine. If I can just find the missing link in the theory, I will be able to return to the past.

Normally, I would think, 'Oh, this guy is crazy,' and keep my distance. But as I listened to his story, I was strangely drawn in. He developed an incredibly profound theory about physics and the concept of time.

Listen, young man. Time is not a line, but an overlap. This very moment, as you are desperately memorizing words, overlaps with the consciousness of your successful future self. The moment your future self is convinced that 'I am here because of that hard work back then,' power is sent to your past self.

I don't know if he really managed to build a time machine. But his words struck deep into my heart, which was exhausted from lonely studying. 'This painful moment right now has meaning. It is connected to my future self.' That might have been the 'salvation' I needed most, even now as I am 48 years old and about to jump into the unknown sea of independence.

3. Vancouver Chaos: The Abyss of House Parties

Of course, it wasn't just about being stoic. Sometimes, I was invited by local friends to house parties. But that was a deep and chaotic world that fundamentally overturned the concept of 'drinking parties' I knew in Japan.

It was a place filled with a sweet, heavy scent that I can't really write about in this Reiwa era, where people of all races, ages, and genders mixed together and danced wildly to loud psychedelic music. In a word, it was 'chaos.'

What I saw there was the naked desire of humans and the bottomless emptiness that lies behind overwhelming 'freedom.' 'Everything is here. But if I cling to this, I will no longer be myself.'

In the frenzy, everyone was shouting, 'I am free!' But to me, it looked like they were inside a 'cage called freedom.' At that moment, I asked myself: 'Is this fleeting pleasure what I am looking for? Or is it true freedom, where I carve out my own path in the world?' After that night of madness, I quietly reaffirmed that what I was seeking was not 'hedonism' but 'growth.'

4. The Determination to Discard the Poison Called 'Comfort'

Vancouver is certainly a wonderful city. The climate is mild (though it rains all winter, there is little snow), the people are kind, it is a multicultural society, and it is easy for Japanese people to live there. The Asian food is also good. But about half a year in, I began to feel an inexplicable 'fear'.

If I stay here, I'll just end up as an international student who is 'moderately happy and reasonably good at English'.

It felt like soaking in lukewarm water. I could see the scores for college within reach. I had made a few Japanese friends. I knew how to get around the city. But, should I be satisfied with this? I left Japan to throw away a stable, 'so-so' life.

I needed a tougher place, a place where I would be treated as a 'foreign object.' A place where speaking English is taken for granted, competition is fierce, and the temperature drops to minus 30 degrees in winter—the economic heart of Canada. If I didn't go there, I wouldn't be able to truly destroy and rebuild myself.

Let's go to Toronto, the toughest city in Canada.

To leap further, I dared to push myself. I abandoned comfort and threw myself into a harsh environment. People around me tried to stop me, saying, 'It's a waste after you've finally gotten used to Vancouver,' or 'Toronto's winter is deadly cold.' But, But who cares! What drives my life has always been the 'sense of crisis' I created myself, not 'stability'.

5. Landing in Toronto: The Despair of Native Speed

And so, I crossed the continent and enrolled in a college in Toronto. 'I studied like crazy for half a year in Vancouver. I got my TOEFL score. I'm fully prepared.' Proud of that, I walked through the classroom door in high spirits.

However, what awaited me there was a 'wall' beyond my imagination.

The moment the professor started speaking, my mind went blank. The speed was incomparable to the language school in Vancouver. Moreover, the local students were relentlessly piling on arguments. It was high-speed English mixed with slang, technical terms, and accents.

The English I had spent hundreds of hours learning in the library was a 'still image' compared to them. Their conversation was no longer just a high-speed 'video,' but a storm of information passing by at the speed of light. '...I don't understand a single word of what they're saying.'

When the first day's lecture ended, I stood alone in the college hallway, stunned. I could hear the confidence I had built up in Vancouver crumbling like a sandcastle. 'What did I come here for? Maybe it was impossible after all.'

Despair. For a young man in his early 20s, it was an overwhelmingly heavy reality.

6. To You in Your 40s: The Courage to Put Yourself in an 'Away' Game

I want to tell you, who are in your late 40s and thinking about independence, and you, who are currently crying over your own 'helplessness' abroad.

The comfort of a familiar place can sometimes become a poison that stops your growth.

Your current company, your current position, your current skill set. That is certainly safe. But as long as you stay in that comfort zone, the 'time-traveling guy' inside you—that is, the power to change the future—will not awaken.

Dare to push yourself and put yourself in an 'away' environment where you feel despair. Only then will a human being expose their survival instincts and squeeze out the 'true wisdom to climb back up'.

The me of that day, left behind by the speed of native speakers, was certainly miserable. But that misery became the driving force that transformed me into a 'real monster'.

If you feel like you are about to be left behind by the speed of the times right now. If you are in despair, feeling like you are a powerless existence who is nobody. That is the signal that your 'second life' has finally begun.

Despair, if used correctly, becomes the most powerful gasoline. Next, I will talk about how I tore through that 'despair' in the crucible of a Toronto college and won my place step by step. Let's talk about that gritty 'tactic of counterattack'.

Your life is just getting started from here!