Book Review - "The Habit of Making Peace with Your Heart and Doing Things Well" by Tsuneko Nakamura

Review

A wonderful book where you can read the precious words of active psychiatrist Dr. Tsuneko Nakamura, who is 89 years old. Dr. Nakamura is an incredible person who still works full-time four days a week, and until two years ago, she was working full-time six days a week.

Dr. Nakamura describes herself by saying, "My only merit is that I have worked for a long time," but is it really possible to continue working full-time for about 70 years? I don't think there are many people who can easily say "I can do that."

You might think she is a workaholic who loves her job, but that is not the case.

　By the way, I have dedicated much of my life to work, but if asked whether I like it, honestly, I don't (laughs).
　Of course, it's not that I hate it, but I wouldn't say I love it from the bottom of my heart. If you ask if I had any big goals in working, I didn't have any at all (laughs).
(omitted)
　All I have done is, at most, "If the patient in front of me relies on me, I will respond to that," or "If it's something I can do, I will do it."

The doctor is incredibly cool...

For a doctor who became a physician in the chaos after the war, work was not a matter of whether to do it or not, but something that had to be done to survive. There was no room for frivolous things like the meaning of work or goals. Yet, there was no pressure like "Just shut up and work!" from a high-handed position; just a calm, relaxed demeanor.

The doctor says,

"Working for money is perfectly fine."

It is no problem at all if you don't like your job.
"It's better to do it than not to do it"
is just the right mindset to keep going.

She says this calmly. That is the depth of her wisdom.

For someone like me who tends to clamor for various things from work—self-realization, dreams, goals, purpose in life, social contribution—it felt like being slapped across the face. Of course, those things are not wrong. However, work is primarily something you do to make a living. You must not forget that.

I think things like "purpose in life" or "self-growth" should be thought about slowly and gradually once you are able to feed yourself properly and have some breathing room.

I suppose it's because we forget these things that we end up falling for exploitation disguised as "meaningful work."

Another major message the doctor conveys in this book is that "humans are ultimately alone."

　There are truly many people who suffer from human relationships, but you must not forget.
　No matter how far you go, people are alone.
　This is the same even for parents and children. Since each person is a separate individual with their own will, you cannot always live facing the same direction. It is a waste of time to constantly seek to be with someone, saying "my peers" or "my friends," or to worry deeply about not being able to make "close mom friends" or "intimate people" at work.
(omitted)
Don't assume that people you get along with will always help you. You need a good sense of distance and acceptance.
　In the first place, human relationships are "fickle."
　They come together and fall apart over the smallest things. Humans immediately flow toward where their own interests lie, and as time and distance grow and you stop meeting, the ties fade away. That is what human relationships are.

Because we don't face the absolute reality that "humans are alone," we end up expecting too much from others, trying to meet their expectations, fearing them, trying to control them, or trying to change them.

Reading this book and learning not to have expectations of human relationships in a good way has made me feel much more at ease. The meaning (significance) of even thinking things like "Will I be hated if I do this?" has decreased. If people are ultimately alone, it doesn't really matter much whether you are hated or liked.

Also, I've come to think that becoming important or famous doesn't matter at all. If I imagine reaching the point of being 89 years old, my current worries and desires for approval really don't matter. If you expand the range of time or space in your imagination, you will realize that most worries and desires are trivial (you will understand immediately if you imagine it as: a small earth in a small solar system in a small galaxy in a vast universe... and so on in Japan).