Declaration: Living for the 'Self I Want to Be' Because I'm Around 60

Seeing the '#SelfIWantToBe' hashtags lined up, I suddenly asked myself a question.

Have I pursued my own ideals and lived the life of the 'self I want to be'?

"No!" perhaps?

Even though I've lived for so long, I don't feel like I've ever been conscious of the 'self I want to be'.

If I could have kept the 'self I want to be' in sight, held onto a purpose in life or life goals, and lived while envisioning and pursuing my ideal self, I think that would have been wonderful.

After all, life is a process until the day we die.

There is no way that the time remaining for me, at around 60, is longer than the time I have already lived. So, I will take this opportunity to look back at the past and try to think about my own version of the 'self I want to be'.

And from today on, I should just live while being conscious of the 'self I want to be'.

Looking back on the days when I raised four children as a full-time housewife and supported my husband as a wife, I feel as though I avoided even imagining the 'self I want to be'. Since I never really questioned the family values instilled in me during the Showa era, after I married at 21, I always put myself last, prioritized my husband and children, and ran around seeking the 'ideal way a family should be'.

Contrary to the me of that time who thought it was natural to marry and keep a home, my husband had goals when he was young. It was 'to get a PhD in the United States and become a professor at an American university'.

Because that husband met me, he gave up his dream. He wanted to marry me, but my parents were strongly opposed, and he couldn't marry me unless he stayed in Japan. Before the internet, in an era when phone calls were too expensive to make easily, I could understand my parents' worried feelings.

With marriage, it became important for my husband to create an ideal family instead of chasing his own dream. He thought it would be counterproductive to increase his work for income and reduce the time spent with his family, so he sacrificed income to implement a three-day weekend and prioritized time spent with the family.

For better or worse, he was a husband who didn't care about general common sense.

His power to seek ideals was so strong that he planned to escape Japan, saying that ideal child-rearing was difficult to achieve in Japan. At one point, as a parent, I became disgusted with the uniform Japanese school education that tended to demand conformity.

My husband wanted to raise our children in a way that would allow them to become the 'selves they want to be'.

With that background, our family boldly chose the path of moving overseas as a family of six. If I had been pursuing the 'self I want to be' as an individual or seeking a special career, I might not have agreed with my husband at that point and our family might have collapsed, but since my ideal was 'to help my husband and build a good family,' I agreed positively.

It has already been over a quarter of a century since we, our family, took our four children, aged 5 to 12, and moved to Samoa, a small country floating in the South Pacific.

Child-rearing and housework are endless jobs, and on top of that, establishing a comfortable life in an environment with a different language and culture was not easy. I had no time to think about the 'self I want to be,' and I plunged into a chaotic adventure life involving the children.

Looking back, most of the many hardships are now just funny stories, but in everything, I put myself last and prioritized being a mother and a wife. Even so, the fact that I didn't have any major dissatisfaction might mean that, in the end, that way of living was my own style of the 'self I want to be'. One could also say that I just didn't have the wisdom to think deeply about it...

On the other hand, my husband's 'self he wanted to be,' which he had once given up on due to marriage, must have always been smoldering in a corner of his heart. After spending four years in Samoa, we headed to the United States as a family. Of course, we thought about a better educational environment for the children, but he hadn't completely given up on his former goal.

While supporting his family, he studied furiously with a rusty brain, and when he successfully achieved his goal, he was already in his late 40s. He took such a long detour just because he prioritized love and marriage.

With that background, my husband always told our children, 'Don't put yourself in a mold. Just become who you want to be.' I think that's because he knew better than anyone the importance of living for the 'self you want to be' during the time you are alive.

I don't know if that encouragement worked, but our children are each walking their own desired paths in the United States. As someone who has run alongside them to achieve the family's goals, it is now a joy to be able to watch them move forward on the 'path to the self they want to be'. No parent wants to see their child in an unhappy state.

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, my husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer and passed away after a seven-month battle. He was the person with whom I had been carving out history for 43 years, ever since I was 16. I think he had a good life because he lived seeking his ideals and finished his life having achieved the 'self he wanted to be'.

But that was also a gift that I could support my husband and children with all my might precisely because I didn't have a 'self I wanted to be' of my own. And being able to share many emotions and joys in the midst of that also became my own life story.

In the daily joys and sorrows, there were times when it was so painful I wanted to die, and the reason I was able to overcome the biggest low point in my life was precisely because I was supported by a lot of kindness and love.
I felt that the result of doing everything I could for the comfortable life of my family returned as a great reward.

There is a term called 'Zuiki Kudoku' (meaning that rejoicing in the joy and happiness of others becomes a way to accumulate one's own virtue).

Looking back, I have naturally been doing that. In these days when words like efficiency, time performance, and productivity are rampant, if one only prioritizes such things, even if one can obtain a sense of individual achievement, it does not necessarily mean that one's happiness as a human being will increase.

It is precisely because there are people I love from the bottom of my heart and people I want to support that the chances for joy and happiness increase. Because being able to taste the joys and sorrows together in a relationship of loving and being loved is the real thrill of living.

To achieve that, I need peace of mind, so I want to be someone who can love others while living a lifestyle that is true to myself, based on my own priorities.

Now that my husband has passed away and my children are independent, I am at the threshold of my second life.

It is not too late. The rest of my life is meant solely for the 'self I want to be'.

The 'self I want to be' that I have discovered is someone who cherishes relationships with trustworthy people, yet is not swayed by others, and can live while savoring happiness.

I am glad I found the 'self I want to be'.

My husband wrote a book about our life in Samoa, which happened over a quarter of a century ago.