On the Sense of Change and Expansion

I read somewhere once that "as people age, their musical tastes become fixed, and they only listen to the kind of music they listened to in their teens."

This probably doesn't apply to serious music lovers. There are two reasons that come to mind immediately.

First, no matter how wonderful a work is, if a person continues to receive the same stimulation, their senses gradually become saturated, and the emotional impact they can derive from it diminishes. This "adaptation" is a fundamental property of living things, so it is bound to happen. And since serious music lovers really do listen to music every single day, by the time they are over 30, the works they were obsessed with in their teens will have all reached that point of saturation.

Therefore, continuing to listen only to the same artists is like chewing gum that has lost its flavor indefinitely, and one cannot fundamentally be satisfied with this.

Next is the difference between a casual way of enjoying something and a serious hobby. I think people who have a serious hobby know the fun of breaking records, which is "expanding the range that one's own sensibilities can grasp to the fullest". Whether it's science fiction novels or going around eating at creative ramen shops, it doesn't matter; while there are classic masterpieces, famous shops, and standard flavors in these fields that many people acknowledge, there are also, without a doubt, challenging figures who provide unconventional and new experiences that make you want to ask, "Is this kind of expression even allowed!?", and a significant number of core fans who seek them out.

In other words, they find pleasure not just in tasting what they already know, but in the very process of exploring the unknown and becoming able to understand things they couldn't understand before. If this were about music, the moment you stop listening to new works, it would no longer qualify as a serious hobby.

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There seem to be some slightly different opinions. For example, since I have been playing an instrument as a hobby for about the last 10 years, I sometimes think that if it were novels, you wouldn't be able to call it a "serious hobby" unless you advanced to the realm of "writing them yourself," or if it were food, "cooking it yourself." Well, that's a different story, and it doesn't have much to do with the main point of this discussion.

Anyway, as far as hobbies that involve receiving works are concerned, I think that for the reasons mentioned above, continuing to search for new types of works becomes essential.

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It's not that a serious hobby is superior. As a casual hobby, seeking out music you've loved since long ago or food with familiar flavors is fine in its own way. Or rather, I just used the word "fine," but a hobby is not something that others should call good or bad in the first place.

For example, I like coffee, but I am by no means a serious coffee lover. Let's take canned coffee as an example. I suspect there are many people who are serious coffee lovers who think, "I can't drink that stuff, it tastes terrible."

But I have always liked the 10 or 15 minutes of relaxation that appear thanks to that canned coffee—cold in the summer and warm in the autumn and winter. It is also convenient to be able to quickly get sugar and caffeine when you want to switch gears and do your best again. These short and affordable breaks are indispensable to my life. To judge this by saying things like "you don't know the taste of real coffee" is, to use an old idiom, "none of your business."

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I digressed a bit. The story so far is this.

• If you are going to pursue something seriously, the process of "expanding the world you can understand" will always emerge

• Even if there are people who pursue something seriously, there is no reason why everyone needs to be serious about the same things to the same degree

And if this is just a story about hobbies, it doesn't matter either way. It's fine to be serious, and it's fine not to be. It's the same not just for private hobbies on the weekend, but for your job during the day. It's fine to be serious, and it's fine not to be.

However, what about a human being who is alive but not serious about anything? It's fine to be half-hearted at work. And it's fine to just lounge around after coming home. No particular hobbies. Relationships don't really matter. Love and marriage are a hassle. If there were such a person, are they really "living"? Is there any value there beyond the fact that they haven't died as a biological organism yet?

"There's no point in living recklessly" is also a value system and a view of life, and I don't mean to deny that. However, at the very least, the path to reaching such a state of mind requires a certain kind of seriousness, a lack of compromise, and a strength as a philosophy, doesn't it?

The ideas that "it's enough just to be alive" or "you are fine just as you are" are not wrong at all. However, it won't do to have a mushy, vague sense of them. There must be something active within you that supports those claims. And that must be something you have truly grasped for yourself.

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What you become serious about is a matter of personal preference. So, it is fine to be obsessed with your work, or to immerse yourself in a niche hobby. You can make love or friendships your reason for living, or you can start volunteering. There is no such thing as something you must do.

Even so, you probably must become serious about something.It has to be that way. If that happens to be love, the fact that the prince you dreamed of in your teens does not exist anywhere in this world should not be just a disillusionment.

That is the starting line. We must understand not just as a selfish fantasy, but what other people—flesh-and-blood human beings—are thinking and how they behave. Within that reality, we must learn how to actually build and maintain relationships, and come to understand the subtle aspects of human relationships and the value they contain, which are not found in simple fairy tales.

This is precisely the sense of expansion I mentioned at the beginning. Instead of seeking only flavors that are simply sweet or greasy, how far can you come to understand more subtle flavors? Without that, you will become a person who cannot be satisfied with anything but junk food, for whom love is a barren cycle of expectation and disappointment, and who can only see workplace squabbles and political news as a conflict between good and evil.

If you are still a young child, it is understandable that you cannot grasp the subtle aspects of the world. However, you are no longer a child.

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Aging and growth are not the same thing. If we are not changing, we are not alive; if we can only understand the same things we did five or ten years ago, if we can only like the same things, and if we just continue to loathe the same "things we hate" with the same resolution and interpretation, then we are not truly alive.

Therefore, this is not just a story about subcultural hobbies. We are born into this world in a state where we cannot understand most of what exists around us. It is much the same even when we become adults. When there are 100 things in the world, as a child you might see about two, and now as an adult, you might see six or seven. That is not enough. It is not everything yet.

The problem lies in the fact that we are convinced that "that is everything." Things we do not know, cannot see, and cannot understand are, by definition, always missing from our thinking. What I just said is something like a tautology—it just means "you cannot think about something that is not in your head"—but recognizing this is extremely important.

You cannot know things you do not know by trying to know them. All we can do is recognize that "what we see now is not the entirety of the world" and continue to walk consciously, outward and outward, from where we are now.

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I cannot provide content by saying "this is the world" or "this is what life is." I don't think such things are interesting. However, regarding this sense of change and expansion, I feel it is not so wrong as a guideline. I don't know the answer. No one knows it. Even so, searching is correct. Opening your eyes and starting to walk is, in itself, correct.

The dead do not move. What proves our life is change.

(essay 4 - 2024.8.8)

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