Glad to be Born: Beyond Existentialism

Today, I will explain the concept of being glad to have been born.

When asked what the goal of psychiatric treatment is, I often say it comes down to two things: accepting that some things cannot be helped, and feeling glad to have been born.

Now, you might think, 'Wait, Masuda, isn't psychiatry and treatment different for everyone?'

You might often wonder what I'm talking about and why it has to be these two things.

When they hear this, some people might think, 'Oh, I see,' while others might wonder what on earth I'm saying; there are all sorts of reactions.

I get quite a bit of pushback.

Many psychiatrists and doctors often tell me they don't understand what I mean or ask what that's supposed to be, but I keep saying it's these two things.

It might seem vague, but fundamentally, it is impossible to express the heart, healing, or what it means to be human in words, so I believe it's a matter of how to express the impossible.

I'm just saying that these two points are my way of expressing it.

When you try to capture the world, you take a photograph.

Even with a photograph, you can only capture a partial view.

If you try to capture a 3D object in 2D, you can only capture a part of it.

So, how did artists try to re-express the world? They started using abstract painting and various other techniques.

We psychiatrists explore what the heart is while observing various diverse things, and we are people who do the work—or the practice—of applying that to the patients right in front of us.

How should I put it?

It's impossible to express the things we've noticed and the understanding we've reached in words, so this is the result of thinking about how to convey it as clearly as possible, even within those limitations.

Hmm, this is difficult.

It's not coming out quite right, but that's what I mean.

I chose these two phrases as something easy for various people to visualize when trying to focus on and clearly convey something from within this infinite and complex information.

■ Consistent and harmless

But this isn't actually that wrong.

In other words, one point is that it doesn't contradict past thinkers and philosophers.

Is that a bit off-center?

It doesn't contradict various people, especially Japanese thought and aesthetics, with the idea of 'it cannot be helped.'

The idea of being glad to have been born is more of a Christian or Western concept, but it doesn't contradict that either, and yet it also has a Japanese feel to it, and a slightly pastoral quality, so I think it's fine because it doesn't create contradictions.

Plus, you might be surprised, but it doesn't contradict modern psychiatry or psychology either.

Or clinical psychology.

I think that's wonderful, too.

It might sound conceited to say it's wonderful myself, but I thought it was good.

The goals of cognitive behavioral therapy and psychoanalysis are also about accepting that some things cannot be helped.

The goals of narrative therapy, family therapy, and the like are about understanding who you are, realizing you are glad to have been born, and facing yourself, and the destination of mindfulness is also being able to feel glad to have been born, so there is no contradiction.

Psychiatrically speaking, a state of recovery from depression means not being dominated by anxiety or trauma, having the frontal lobe actively suppressing the overactivity of the amygdala, and having proper inhibition over the activity of the reward system, so I think it's fine because it doesn't contradict that.

And the third point is that it does not cause harm to others.

It is not something that harms others, nor does it require sacrificing anything, and it is physically possible for everyone to reach.

For example, if you say that healing means receiving 10 billion yen—I shouldn't have said 10 billion yen first—or acquiring money, or being in a superior position to others, that cannot apply to everyone, and doesn't it hurt someone?

Healing someone should not mean hurting someone else, so it deviates from such principles, and in that sense, I think it is a good vision.

I would like to hear what other people think healing is, their versions of healing, but for me, these two are very good.

If you live while thinking about and savoring these words, you can think backward about how to reach healing.

You can think backward about what healing is.

When you are facing your current situation and suffering from unreasonable things, you can accept that it cannot be helped, look at reality as it is, and try to move on.

If you know that is the goal, I think it might be easier to handle.

People tend to think there might be other options, but there aren't.

There aren't.

I don't know either.

That's not because I'm stupid or not talented; it's just that I don't know.

Sometimes there really aren't any.

If you ask an AI and no new options come up, then there aren't any.

Humans often have no choice but to accept that it cannot be helped and act accordingly, so that's what it's about.

When you are trying to make a choice, it is better to think about whether it will lead you to feel glad that you were born.

You are in a situation where you could steal money right now.

But when you steal it, will what you gained make you feel glad to have been born?

You want to drink alcohol, but if you do, you might hurt someone.

If you think about which is better for feeling glad to have been born, the answer comes naturally.

Humans want to do the right thing.

That is why the idea of being glad to have been born comes up in various situations, and I think it is a good criterion for judgment.

While running online self-help groups and patient support groups, I realized I had to convey to many people what treatment is and what healing is.

This was also true for the staff running the self-help groups. Various people study cognitive behavioral therapy, analysis, and various other psychotherapies, and while learning not just psychiatry but also various books, philosophy, and history, they try to come up with their own theories and treatment theories.

However, as long as we are working as a team, and as long as we are running a self-help group or a family support group, a shared set of values is absolutely necessary. As a result of searching for words that would align everyone's feelings without denying individual opinions, I arrived at these two, so I have confidence in that sense.

This part is long.

I gave a bit of a preamble.

◾️ What does it mean to be glad to be born?

Now, I will talk about what it means to be glad to be born.

Ultimately, where did the phrase 'glad to be born' come from? It is a phrase I learned from Dr. Murphy Shigematsu, a Japanese-American professor who taught mindfulness at Stanford.

Dr. Murphy is Japanese-American, and it seems he took it from the movie 'Tora-san'.

Tora-san is asked by his nephew.

He asks, 'What do you think we live for?'

Tora-san says, 'Hmm, let's see.'

He says, 'Well, I guess we live so that we can feel glad to be born, don't we?'

I did a bit of a subtle impression there.

He says, 'I think we live to feel glad that we were born.'

It would be nice if we could laugh at the end when we die.

This is very Japanese, but at the same time, it is also very European.

It is an affirmation of existence.

This is difficult to understand, though.

Originally, in ancient Christianity, it seems that living was painful for everyone during the period when ancient Christianity emerged.

That is why it was afterlife-oriented.

They were thinking about what would happen after death and whether they could be happy after death.

Christianity was born from the religion of the Jews, but the Jews were in a lot of pain; they were a slave nation, and there were times when they were slaves as an ethnic group.

They had such times, so it was painful.

In such a situation, they believed that we, the Jews, would be saved.

It is said that they thought they would be saved if they believed in these strict rules and this religion.

In the midst of that, Jesus Christ said, 'No, it's not just the Jews; everyone will be saved.'

He said, 'Everyone will be saved. God is omniscient and omnipotent enough to save everyone, so you're glad to be born, right? You will be forgiven by God, you are loved by God, so you're glad to be born, right?' That is the ancient Christian way of thinking.

From there, until the Middle Ages, the theoretical system progressed.

Theology continued to systematize itself.

It systematized while incorporating Greek philosophy, asking what this means, what the Bible means, and how to interpret parts of the Bible that contradict each other, so there is a process of systematizing various things.

In the midst of that, various understandings progressed.

What God is, what it means to be omniscient and omnipotent, and such things were verbalized in various ways.

It went from an intuitive Christianity, an oral, intuitive Christianity, to something more systematized.

The role that Christianity played in systematizing and organizing was also amazing in that it unified the region politically.

In ancient times, various tribes believed in various things.

But the Roman Empire was built up, and from there, Christianity was necessary to understand that we are the Roman Empire and that we are the same country.

They used Christianity.

They made it the state religion.

Even after the Roman Empire split, because they believed in the same Christianity, it is said that the region was able to deter war to some extent.

The Middle Ages are coming to an end.

The Catholic Church is becoming organized.

This is Masuda's interpretation of history, so it does not mean that this is 100% correct, and there are some interpretations that are a little different here and there.

There are also points that differ.

That is because I am making it easy to understand in the video, so strictly speaking, it is a little different.

History is difficult, after all.

Or rather, it is not something that can be easily told, so it ends up like this, inevitably.

Well, please understand that.

From there, in the early modern period, or perhaps the modern period, the internalization of faith occurs due to the appearance of Luther.

It becomes the age of the Bible.

Printing presses also appeared, and instead of being taught at church, people began to read the Bible themselves and think for themselves.

The individual begins to be born.

Ancient Christianity said you are loved by God, and by the Middle Ages, it was like, 'The organization, the Catholic Church, is there for you, so you're okay.'

It protects you.

It really, how should I put it, stabilizes the country.

After that becomes the norm, it then moves to the internalization of the individual along with the sense of corruption in the organization.

Within the individual, they wonder, 'Is this okay? But the church is scary, the country is scary, the organization is scary.'

In such a situation, when wondering if they are okay or what the rules of the organization are, they discover the individual.

If I believe properly, even if the church says it's a lie, if I have the feeling of believing, then that's fine.

This is the discovery here.

So, it's okay to be an individual.

If you truly believe in yourself, even if the people around you or the church around you say it's a lie, you can think that as long as you have been believing correctly, you will not be abandoned by God.

We are entering this age of the individual, and when you can realize that, you can feel glad that you were born.

We weren't sinful human beings after all.

I thought I was a bad person for going against the church, but I realize that wasn't the case.

When you ask, 'Is it really okay to be that free?', the concept of predestination comes up.

John Calvin's doctrine of predestination comes up.

No, no, we are already free.

While thinking freely, we act freely.

That might sometimes mean saying 'no' to the church.

There is this kind of freedom.

But God has even predestined that, so He said, 'Go ahead and be free.'

Whether you go to heaven or hell is decided from the beginning; it's all planned out, and that is precisely why we are free to act as we please. This might be hard to understand when you first hear it.

But if you chew on it, you'll understand.

It's about being resigned to one's fate, isn't it?

Just accepting it.

Even this, even this malice, is something God has already predestined.

Having said that, Shinran says that no one would knowingly eat poison from the start, but it's a bit similar to Shinran's 'Akunin Shoki' (the idea that the wicked are the primary object of salvation), and when you understand this,

you go on as an individual.

I think it really makes a difference whether this exists or not.

I often get lost too, and when I'm doing YouTube, I wonder if this is okay, but in the end, I read textbooks, read papers, and interpret things in my own way. Luther learned from textbooks, he learned from texts, and since it was the era of the Bible, I always think that if I believe it's right within myself, I should do it, especially when I think about this time.

I always think that Europe is strong because everyone learns this history—the history of repentance and the various people like Luther.

I often think that.

Just as Japanese people think about Tokugawa Ieyasu, Nobunaga, and Hideyoshi, people in Europe remember these things, and especially Protestants think about the importance of Luther, so I find it interesting.

After that, Luther's time was also the Renaissance, so the Bible and the church were becoming unable to explain science.

We enter the age of reason.

It becomes an age of reason where we start to think from scratch about what morality is and what it means to live, without God.

This is sometimes called the Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment, various philosophies and logic developed, and after that, people said, 'Experiments are important, aren't they?', and we entered the age of positivism.

Let's verify, let's prove, let's confirm reproducibility.

It became an age of experimentation, and it became more modern.

◾️Existentialism

In the end, to say it again, what does it mean to be glad to be born? After going through the age of reason, what can we, who can no longer believe in God, hold onto to feel glad that we were born?

You think about this, don't you?

There are people who have already thought about it.

They are the existentialists.

Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, and Heidegger.

There are philosophers who thought about what our existence is and what the value of that existence is.

Who are these people?

Jaspers is also one of them.

Jaspers was originally a psychiatrist, but he became a philosopher.

If you understand this existentialism, you can understand why it's good to be born.

What are the characteristics of existentialism? The conclusion is that human beings are lonely.

No matter how far you go, human beings will never understand each other 100% or 120%.

It's not like the old days where God exists; human beings will never understand each other.

No matter how far you go, you are lonely.

There is no absolute value; it is valueless, it is meaningless.

It's similar to the Buddhist concept of impermanence.

There is no ultimate value; value fluctuates.

There is no ultimate meaning; meaning also fluctuates.

That is what it means.

And it is unreasonable.

There is luck, it is unreasonable, there is fate, it is not equal.

Unreasonable. And yet, human beings are free.

There is a sense in which we freely create our own meaning.

We can think about things freely.

That might be obvious, but if you understand the meaning of this freedom as truly breaking away from the idea that everything is decided by God, it's interesting.

This freedom means that you are not defined by God.

Originally, it felt like even if you were deciding things for yourself, you were ultimately in the palm of God's hand.

But that's not the case, is it? You realize that because there is this meaninglessness, and because you are not in His palm, you are free.

This is said to be the characteristic of existentialism.

That is why Sartre said to create your own value while participating in society, and Kierkegaard and Heidegger—Kierkegaard said that by seriously facing the fact that you will die, you make your existence independent, you understand what you are, and your self-function improves.

It is said that these are the characteristics.

Once you reach this point, and you understand this from the bottom of your heart, you realize that it is still good to be born, that there is value, and that you exist. If you pursue this to the end, you arrive at being glad to be born, but it's difficult, this existentialism.

But you know, doesn't this resonate with all of you?

I think it does.

That you are truly alone.

As Dr. Masuda says, family doesn't understand.

Even though they try hard to understand, they don't understand me at all.

Psychiatry is too difficult to understand.

They don't understand the illness.

That it is truly meaningless and worthless.

It's not just that I'm worthless because I can't work, but that I might be worthless even if I did work.

Why did I get sick?

Isn't it unreasonable, just for me?

Why am I the only one with a disability, or IQ issues, or developmental disorder issues?

Masuda calls himself gifted, but what are you? Is that bragging? Isn't it unreasonable, you might think.

So what if you have OE?

I think things like that happen.

Freedom.

I don't know what I should do.

What should we, who feel that way, do?

I think that exists.

You might think Masuda is saying mean things, but when I'm doing clinical work, I really think about this often.

I think the questions patients ask are truly facing existentialism, and I didn't really understand it either when I was a resident or a new doctor.

I didn't truly understand the value of life—why people with only a few years left to live keep living, or what it means for us to work all night treating people with dementia.

But I sort of understand it.

I work hard because I can sort of understand the smiles and thoughts of the people there, but I didn't fully grasp it in the beginning.

But as I kept doing it, I gradually came to understand that there is truly value in each and every one of these things.

Because of loneliness, there is a kind of solitary beauty, and being lonely is also beautiful in a way.

There is also a nobility to it.

It is precisely because things are worthless or meaningless that there is meaning felt now, precisely because things are unreasonable that it feels wonderful when things go well, precisely because there is freedom that we are given roles, and when we are given limitations, we can feel a great sense of mission; I really come to understand these things well.

This is what it is.

Therapy that understands these things is called existential psychotherapy, and it feels like that's exactly what it is, though it seems there was a time when existential psychotherapy and psychopathology were popular.

They do existential psychotherapy at Gummy-san's place, and things like this exist.

That said, there are few places that do existential psychotherapy thoroughly, and I think I include some of the essence of it as well.

That is what it is about. I'm glad I was born; but I think there are many people who feel that way without thinking about it this deeply, so I want those who feel that way to just keep doing what they are doing.

But I think this is what it is.

The phrase 'I'm glad I was born' is a bit difficult and I think it's hard to understand, but please think about it while keeping in mind the various things you heard today, yes.

With that, I have explained 'I'm glad I was born' for now.

◾️Today's Homework

Today's homework is for you to write your impressions of today's video and the moments when you felt glad to be born, which I think will be a good learning experience.

▼Online Self-Help Group/Family Association Homepage
https://peer-support-community.com/

▷ Click here for detailed membership information
https://www.notion.so/db1a847cd9da46759f3ee14c00d80995

▷ How to register for membership from iPhone (Safari)https://youtu.be/_49prDk9fQw?si=BMjBO1CyXlhq7BaI
▷ How to register for membership from iPhone (Google Chrome)https://youtu.be/38zE3uwcPgg?si=XE2GJ8hWI-ATjjGe

▼Click here to register for the Online Self-Help Group/Family Association Official LINE
https://lin.ee/XegaAAT
ID: @321iwhpp