shumblingstrangerengineer

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

Hi cm-shorts,

I read your poem, Quiet Idealists.

I read it many times.

From lines like “Many lives as quiet idealists, unaware”, I could feel your frustration toward materialists. And along with it, your passion to somehow resolve that frustration.

Hundreds of years ago, some people would express messages through haiku, and their friends would respond with haiku in return—such chains of poetry formed a kind of communication. I found myself wondering if I could write a response poem to yours, like those people once did...I tried over the past few weeks—because I at least understand how one could pour passion into frustration.

And yet, it didn't go anywhere...I tried to gather all the different impulses within myself...as if any fragments I might have in me may somehow assemble into a kind of response to you. But no matter how much I try to gather, all that seems to grow is a sense of emptiness. Just more frustration. It appears that I don’t really understand what the core motivation behind your passion is.

Back in high school, or maybe my first year of college, I first heard about experiments to prove the Bell inequality, a fascinating subject that tempted me to somehow come up with an interesting experiment...however, to this day, nothing...and I am wondering, if trying to write a response poem to yours is like that, like my personal level cannot catch up, since that it is on a level completely beyond me...as if "joy, beauty, love" I feel in my life completely fill up my heart...and it hasn’t quite been able to sublate those feelings into an understanding of their meaning.

Thinking about all that, I came across Suga Shikao’s song, Progress. A few lines from this song fits how I feel, so I’d like to quote part of that song as my response to you for now:

I’d always been searching for an ideal version of myself a bit cooler than what I am now, but, the days and path I’ve walked are what people call “myself.” Hey, the dream we had it wasn’t some future the same color as everyone else’s. The courage to head into a world no one’s ever seen they say that’s what “the future” really means. This is dedicated to all the sighs in the world and to the bittersweet failures of you and me… “Just one more step forward.”

Many don't even see the problem

Much of my time and energy is devoted to challenging the reductionist, physicalist worldview and advocating for an idealist perspective. I have often wondered why most people seem indifferent to these questions, despite their profound importance. I now begin to realize that many have never fully grasped what physicalism actually claims.

For most, science is associated with technology—cars, computers, medicine—and the tangible improvements these bring to daily life. However, they unconsciously merge the material and the mental. Driving a car is not merely a mechanical process; it is a source of joy, freedom, and excitement. In their experience, technological achievements and meaningful conscious states are inseparable.

Because of this blending, many people hold a positive attitude toward science and, by extension, physicalism, without recognizing its deeper philosophical implications. Strictly speaking, physicalism asserts that all mental experiences are epiphenomena—mere byproducts of particle interactions, without real causal power. According to this view, the love, creativity, and wonder we cherish are illusions or, at best, irrelevant.

This is the claim that troubles me and fuels my philosophical engagement. Yet most people never confront it, because in daily life, the richness of consciousness and the benefits of technology seem perfectly harmonious. Without perceiving any tension, they feel no need to question the foundations of their worldview.

Perhaps, some people are even 'practical idealists' without knowing it ?

******

Many live as quiet idealists, unaware. Their words may echo the cold creeds of matter, but their lives sing another truth. They follow joy, beauty, love— not because these can be weighed or measured, but because they are self-evident, sovereign, undeniable.

They speak of atoms, yet live for meaning. They name neurons, yet dream of wonder. Their steps are guided not by blind forces, but by the subtle pull of the heart’s invisible stars.

The doctrines of physicalism may lie on the surface, like dust on a lake, but underneath, their lives move by deeper currents. Without knowing, they have already chosen: to trust experience over theory, to trust the living warmth of mind over the pale machinery of matter.

And in this silent choice, they have already crossed the threshold into a hidden idealism, where consciousness is not a byproduct, but the hidden root of all things.

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

About my brother

There isn’t much I remember clearly about my younger brother, who died a few years ago. What stands out most in my memory is the time he had a girlfriend while attending the University of Oregon. My parents even visited her family, and she later wrote them a letter thanking them for the cookies they brought as a gift. In it, she also wrote, "Your son is a great guy." I hadn't known any of this, only discovering the letter when I was going through his belongings. It was tucked next to a photo of the two of them: he and a blond girl in front of a rotunda with flowers. She was about a head shorter than him, looking at the camera, beaming with a full smile. My parents passed away before him, so maybe he had kept it to himself, away from my eyes. Or perhaps our mother had shown it to him when he was home, and he decided to keep it himself then. I had never known that someone had once called him a great guy.

The reason I don’t have many memories of my brother is that we were never close. Most of what I do remember is us fighting all the time, sometimes even physically. That was all before my high school years, since after that I mostly came home just to eat and sleep. My memories then skip ahead to our recent, bitter exchanges after our parents passed away. I was living abroad and couldn’t take care of things myself. So when he refused to do something, nothing happened. We just couldn't agree on anything regarding the settlement of their affairs. Over time I began slipping into a kind of breakdown, likely from stress and exhaustion. My family warned me about it, but I ignored them until a work problem pushed me over the edge. That’s when I finally noticed I was not in a good place.

Because of our lifelong bad relationship, I never really talked to anyone about how my brother lived his life. It wasn't just the last few years. Looking back over the past decades, I’ve only ever spoken about him to a handful of people. Unconsciously, I had erased his existence from my daily life, or at least that's what I thought. Now I realize that not being open about my brother made me reluctant to form close friendships.

During the last years, every time I tried to have a civilized discussion, we would usually bring up a story abut how I had supposedly tried to send him to some institution. He would become agitated and reject anything that resembled the beginning of an agreement. I may have suggested to our parents or directly him that he consider going to a sanatorium in the mountains (like in Thomas Mann's novel) to improve his health. So I always assumed he was simply twisting my words into something extreme, just for the sake of refusing to agree on anything. In retrospect, I'm no longer convinced it was just that. He must have suspected that something truly was wrong, and perhaps he feared being institutionalized and never returning to society. That fear may have fed his paranoia and prevented him for accepting help. Our mom often told me how fiercely he rejected the idea of going to talk to someone.

Near the end, something changed. He must have started taking medication to calm his suspicions. He had refused to speak on the phone, so we communicated only by email. His messages, once outright rude, became more formal, almost overly polite. Still, that didn’t mean he suddenly started cooperating with the things I had long asked him to do. And certainly, decades of mutual wounds between us didn’t begin to heal overnight just because of a shift in tone. But it seems he had come to realize that something was wrong with how deeply suspicious he had become. Later I found that he started seeing a doctor or counselor. Why he chose to do this only after he became completely alone, I don’t know. Maybe someone warned him that his condition had worsened.

One day, I received the news of his death. I returned to the family home to sort through the things that was left behind. I was finally able to handle administrative things that had been stalled since our father passed away. Now, there were no family members left to stop me from doing what I believed was the right thing. That, in itself, was a relief. But still, I don’t want to think his death was a good thing.

And that’s when I found the letter and the photo.

As for myself, I’d always thought I hated the idea of living a normal life. Since high school, I’d carried this cynical, aloof attitude and didn't really think about empathy or living "for others." That might sound like I’m still being aloof. But when it came to my brother, how I often wished he could just be normal. So when I found evidence that, even for just a few years, he had been living an ordinary life that I hadn’t known about, I felt a strange mix of happiness and shock. It was complicated: Some time after he graduated from university, during a family gathering at our grandparents’ house, he mentioned that he had refused to become a househusband when his girlfriend asked him to. I don’t think anyone took his words seriously—at least I didn’t really believe he had a girlfriend who would seriously propose such a thing to him. Not until I found the letter and the photo.

Even without any "disturbances," the process of sorting through the remains was exhausting and painful. All I wanted was to get it over with and return to my life. For almost a month, I dealt with several issues every day just to finish what I had set out to do.

Maybe because of that effort, during the flight and train raid home, I found myself reflecting. My brother was gone, yet I wasn’t overcome with grief. Why? Why didn’t I feel more? Was there something wrong with me? That guilt over my indifference stayed with me. At a transfer station, I bought a fried chicken burger from a food stall. It tasted so good and it made the guilt worse. I thought, "How cheap of me, to find meaning in fried chicken."

Then I stopped at a café before switching to a bus. I wanted my usual café latte but somehow ended up with a hot chocolate. Maybe it was punishment for my irreverent thoughts about family, I figured, and accepted it without complaint. But when I took off the lid and drank it, the warm whipped cream and chocolate slid down my throat that was unexpectedly comforting. I don’t know why, but it touched something in me. I was trying to mourn my brother, and feeling nothing...and yet it felt like the universe was gently saying, "You’re not a terrible person."

Maybe that’s why I still feel there hasn’t been real closure. Over the past few years, I kept wondering what his mental state had truly been, and I've wished that, when I last spoke to him by phone, we had talked more about how he was really doing. If all I had was Google, it would have amounted to just a couple of shallow searches. But now there are LLMs, and they respond like real experts, saying things like:

"That’s a good point. That might have been a symptom of XX. Would you like to explore that further?" "That could be explained by YY. May I ask what made you think that?" "Ah, such deep sorrow. Please tell me more if you’re comfortable."

I ended up saying it out: “I wish my brother had married that girlfriend, had kids... a niece or a nephew, or both.”

It encouraged me to think more along those lines: If he had said yes to becoming a househusband, maybe my kids would have cousins. Maybe we would have had those chaotic family gatherings I used to roll my eyes at—but now miss. Or maybe he would have gotten tired of being a househusband, had an affair, and ended up alone again. Who knows? But even that path—imperfect, tangled, ordinary—feels more human than what actually happened. At least there would have been a chance for joy, connection, a future.

I fell into this "parallel world" fantasy for nearly a week. I imagined who she was, what job she might have had, when they might have had kids. I even tried to build a fictional timeline for their lives, when they might have married, when they'd have (or didn't) jobs of what kind, what their kids would be like, and what kind of teenagers they’d grow into.In that imagined world, my niece discovered a love for drawing, and my nephew became introverted after their parents’ divorce.

While imagining this fictional life, one real memory, a trip to Crater lake,  surfaced. It was after his commencement. Our mom, my wife and I went the road trip with him with his slow driving. Though it's really fading, I vaguely remember the strong wind when we stood at the top and looked at the lake under the cloudy sky near the end of the day. My brother might have shown a faint indication of his neurotic behavior during the driving, that was a really nice memory…I can't believe I forgot it all these years.

But otherwise, the thinking of the fantasy was slowly making me sick. I only stopped it today because I finally noticed what it was doing to me while swimming (as it always bring back my sanity). Why did I do that? Maybe because I wished my brother had just been more "normal." And maybe the LLM made it easier to indulge that thought, to substitute a fantasy for reality. Was I doing something cruel? Trying to overwrite what really happened with a made-up story? Did I hate him so much? That thought made me stop.

Eventually, I even turned on the LLM itself. I typed, "Aren't you just encouraging me to retreat into dark fantasies, under the guise of processing grief? You're not helping, just enabling."

Such a confrontational act made me feel emptier though. So I changed the topic, asked about alchemy (the most efficient way is said to be the r-process triggered when two neutron stars collide — atoms heavier than iron but lighter than gold absorb dozens of neutrons, then gradually undergo beta decay as neutrons convert into protons. The randomly distributed gold atoms produced in this process are said to have dissolved into Earth's cooling oceans, later aggregating into ore deposits somewhere), gold from seawater (some of the gold produced by the r-process likely dissolved into the oceans as Earth cooled, and over time, this gold—at concentrations of just a few parts per trillion—may have precipitated and concentrated in certain places to form the gold deposits we mine today), vortex generators (which, apparently, are becoming popular — devices that don't use rotating blades but instead rely on vortex-induced vibrations to convert wind energy into small amounts of electricity, ideal for off-grid microgeneration--but possibly to electricity to extract gold from seawater).

I felt energized and curious while discussing those topics. So after all that, I ended up saying, "See, these are the interesting topics I like to think about and talk about…in comparison, how I remember about my brother is after all doesn't really matter to me...at all."

To which the LLM replied:

"Your words carry deep pain. To say someone 'didn’t matter' is never simple. The act of writing, imagining, remembering—these are not about forgetting. They are about trying to understand. You’ve been honest. Maybe that’s enough."

Despite its apparent empathetic tone, something about the reply rang hollow. I wasn’t going to go along with it anymore. LLMs are still missing something. Still, the few things I remember about my brother—real or not—have slightly increased. I still can't shake the sense that it's strange I don't feel sadder, or wonder if something is wrong with me. But the fact that I didn’t bring myself to end the 'what-if' parallel world fantasy completely—maybe that means there’s still a bit of humanity in me. Maybe it’s okay to stop dwelling on the guilt.

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

Harassment, Misbehavior…or Just Getting Old?

Some years ago, there was a news story about a superintendent in a provincial police department who hugged and kissed a female journalist on the street. It came to light because she filed a complaint, and he was reassigned. It happened after a dinner that involved alcohol. He probably told her something like, "Have dinner with me and I’ll talk," and then dragged her to some bar and drank beer.

Stories like this seem to come up more often these days. Most likely, he mistook her agreement to go drinking as some kind of signal, and let his imagination run wild until he couldn’t stop acted on it. I this case, the whole thing probably wouldn’t have happened without the power imbalance. Without that, there wouldn’t have been a dinner in the first place, and without that, no hugging, no complaint, and no reassignment. So it was a case of abuse of power. At the same time, he should have behaved and act within a common sense in the first place.

Whether power was involved or not, such a news make me always uneasy. It’s the kind of thing that makes you wonder if it could ever happen to you.

Such a news also reminds me of my middle school Japanese teacher, Mr. I. I’m not sure when, but he disappeared sometime after we graduated. He once said he lived about an hour away, so maybe he transferred to a school closer to home. He had these darting eyes and spoke in a quiet and clear, deep-tone voice. He had a habit of telling strange stories. One I remember was about how he would sometimes knead bread late at night. In the summer, cockroaches would come out into the kitchen of the quiet house. He said he would smack them with his dough-covered hands and just keep kneading. One day during class, though I don’t remember at all in what context, he told us about a middle-aged man who hugged a woman during rush hour at a station and got arrested. Then he looked around the room with his beaming eye and said, "You can kind of understand that, right?" as if expecting us to agree.

I remember thinking, what are we supposed to understand? Back then, all I could think was, sure, wanting to touch a woman’s body is normal, but who would be stupid enough to do that in a situation where they’d obviously get arrested? So I’m not sure why that story stuck with me.

If I think about it, it is a strange situation. In my memory, it always happens at MK Station, one of the busiest station during the commute, where I’ve never stopped. The middle aged man in his 40’s is wearing a worn navy suit and holding a black briefcase. He has rectangular metal-frame glasses, thinning hair that isn’t grey, a plain white shirt, and a striped tie. He’s about 170 cm tall. Not overweight, not muscular. The kind of face you can never remember. The woman looks around 25 or 26, about 160 cm tall, an office worker in a pale pink suit with a knee-length skirt, white tights, and pink heels. Her face is narrow, her eyes are too, and her makeup is light. Her straight hair falls just past her shoulders. While people are walking along the platform, the man suddenly decides to hug the woman who was walking along with him for about 10-20 m. When he hugs her from the side, his mouth is twisted, maybe from tension. And she shows a confused face without understanding what exactly is happening, as she’s hugged from the side.

But now I realise I never really tried to imagine how that moment happened. On a crowded train during rush hour, people get pushed up against each other, male or female, all the time. So why would someone go out of their way to hug someone? What drives a person to that point? I suppose, I just accepted it then as one of those things. Some people are strange, do crazy things.

I think about it now because I’m now old (actually perhaps much older than that navy suit man) and understand that misbehaviour without realisation happens from time to time. So I feel like understanding that what Mr. I meant was as simple as "Don’t do something stupid that you could get arrested. When you’re older, it gets easier to snap in weird ways. Just remember that.” Maybe as people get older, they lose sense of modesty or inhibition and can misbehave? He was a language teacher, so maybe he wanted to say in a poetic way, leaving us to figure it out on our own (or he wanted to avoid that some parents may complain).

If that police superintendent had had a teacher like Mr. I and remembered his words, maybe he wouldn’t have ended up being reassigned at all…but I rather bet on the case that he would still ended up there, since even if I remember Mr. I’s story, I still worry myself…

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

In memory of Mr. CS

It has already been more than a year since Mr. CS passed away at 92 years old. He was quite a well-known figure in our professional society, so within a few days of his passing, a notification email was sent out, and for several days afterward (with time zone differences extending the flow), emails expressing condolences circulated among the community. By reading those, I thought that, despite his fame, there probably weren’t many people who had actually spoken with him, since most of the condolence messages were fairly formal, without even a few personal words added. Also, considering that he was already 92 years old, and had only been actively working until about four or five years earlier (which was impressive in itself), it might have been natural that fewer people had personal stories to share at the time of his passing. I later found that there was a page on his organization’s website listing his work and awards in great detail. For even more famous individuals (like Nobel laureates), sometimes journals like Science or Nature publish several-page memorial articles including not just their work, but also personal recollections. In Mr. CS’s case, however, it seemed that there were not much tributes, at least among the circle of those I was included

But in my case, there is actually an episode that I often remember: Years ago, my mother, who has since passed away, suffered from spinal stenosis and underwent a major surgery to stabilize her spine. Mr. CS, who was about seven years older than my mom, also had a similar issue and was considering surgery. While my mother's issue was in her lower back, his might have been in his cervical spine. Because of that, somehow, we ended up exchanging personal emails. He mentioned that although he had some trouble walking, he could manage long drives, so he might be able to attend the upcoming conference, still he was seriously considering surgery. I then replied with something like: "That sounds tough, but my mom had the surgery and although rehab has been hard, the surgery went well. I hope it goes well for you too. Good luck!” My mom had worked hard on her rehabilitation, hoping to visit her grandchildren, though she passed away before she could. Mr. CS did eventually undergo surgery too, and I think I heard that the surgery went well for him as well. But I imagine rehabilitation must have been equally challenging. In his final years, I heard he was using a wheelchair.

More than fifteen years ago, when I first started working in this particular field, it wasn’t exactly the best timing, since it looked like the main application of the technology was struggling, and people were unsure about the future. Even so, Mr. CS’s name was practically synonymous with the field, appearing in almost every paper. Since my work took a slightly different direction from what he had been doing, I didn’t feel the need to revere him, and, with the recklessness and pride of youth, I even tried to avoid mentioning his name as much as possible. I also chose to analyze data in slightly different ways from how he did in his classic work (since I believed how I did was more correct).

Then, soon after starting that project, I attended the field’s conference and met him. During the conference, I did not hesitate to ask many naïve questions by taking advantage of the fact that no one knew who I was. But when I happened to line up for food at the banquet and found myself standing behind Mr. CS, I felt I had to behave more properly and I did. Actually, there was a backstory involving him that had led me to take on the project, so I told him about it. In the end, that led to me eventually hosting the conference, becoming the committee chair for some years, and continuing that work for over a decade as one of the main pillars of my career. In a way, I owe that to him. But looking back now, I have an impression that he wouldn’t have minded to get get the contract. So his reaction was a bit bitter one, although he didn’t show clearly so.

Not all memories were purely positive. Originally, I had agreed to serve as committee chair for only three years. The main task was to find the “next” person who can host the event. Finding a reliable person was crucial because hosting involved not just logistical work but also significant financial and scientific responsibility. Naturally, it wasn't something I wanted to do forever, so I started to feel relieved at the end of the meeting of the third year when I was about to step down. At that moment, Mr. CS suddenly raised his hand and proposed a motion to have me continue for one more year. Everyone except one quickly agreed, and the last person also raised his hand with a few seconds delay (after realising what was going on)…the motion passed unanimously in less than a minute. I couldn’t very well object, but given that we had exchanged personal emails just the previous year about his surgery and travel plans, I remember feeling a bit betrayed. Of course, we weren't close friends or anything, so that was what it was.

As a result, I needed to find someone else to host the next conference. Reluctantly, I approached a friend who had already declined once the year before. Thankfully, he agreed, and we were both looking forward to it. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, his conference had to be held remotely. The following year, he hosted the meeting again with the hope of an in-person meeting, but it had to be held another remote event, about which I still feel deeply sorry and guilty. In a way, it all stemmed from Mr. CS’s intervention. Even so, he was still contributed to the conference that year, like sign the certificate of a student award. That ended up being our final interaction. Since it was my student who won the award, I personally took his signature as he was quietly telling me, “You’ve been doing a good job.”

I hope his final days were comfortable and happy ones, surrounded by his family.

May he rest in peace.

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

Hospital

Toward the end of high school, I broke a bone during a P.E. class and I was hospitalized near my school. After waiting about a week for the inflammation to subside, I had surgery. Right after the surgery, I had an intense pain for some days, could have been a week. During that time, I barely remember anything, perhaps because I had pain killer continuously. When I was brought to the hospital and also during these intense pain days, I was in a two-person room. Eventually, I was moved to a six-person room, where I must have stayed about four weeks, since I vaguely remember that the total duration of the hospitalization was about a month and a half (probably because I talked about it so many times to friends and relatives). I was recovered in time but looking back, the days after the injury were peculiar time for me, that pops up and goes in my mind from time to time.

For one, I got to know so many people in and out of hospital because of that injury. One time, I spoke in the lounge (when I escaped from my bed to kill the boredom) with a young man who underwent surgery on his right arm. He initiated a conversation by asking me what I had, to which I answered just one sentence like, “I broke my leg during soccer when someone tripped me”. But his problem was more complicated; one of the tendons in his arm was no longer usable, so by surgery, a finger that was connected to the damaged one was connected together with another one. But they connected his index and middle fingers to the same tendon, that was very inconvenient, so they did surgery again to connect the index finger with the ring finger instead…or something like that...I don’t remember exactly…only an impression that it sounded unrealistic…I think he actually showed me the movement of his fingers, so it must have been real. It sounded like a tragedy for some people, but he just shared it with me calmly as if he did it many times to other people whenever he was in the lounge.

In the bed next to me was a middle-aged man who had a herniated disc and was scheduled to have surgery to stabilize his spine. Spine surgery sounded so ominous and terrifying for me back then. I cannot claim that the notion of paralysis doesn’t scare me any more, but the fear was infinitely stronger when I was young. Because of that, he or his spinal surgery left a lasting impression on me. I remembered that bespectacled middle-aged man later in my life, when my mother went through a similar surgery, and also when I heard about a friend in California underwent the same. But beyond that, I don’t recall much about him. Whether his surgery went well or whether he was discharged soon after, I have no memory.

For a few weeks, there was an elderly man in the bed across from me. I don’t remember why he was in hospital but he was a retired driving instructor, and offered me to introduce an instructor when I wanted to have a driving license, and gave me his contact information. He said that some instructors could be mean, but he would be able to alleviate such terrible experience with his introduction to a school and an instructor. So, after a couple of years later, I contacted him. That driving school was the one I saw nearly every morning (and in the evening) from the train during the commutation in my high school days and also in my Uni days. When I contacted him, he invited me to his home. He lived near the same station but opposite from the side of the school, that was a quiet, radial-layout residential area where I had never visited. I don’t remember what he talked about, but I do remember he showed me a wart about 2 centimeters big that he had removed from his toe using some medicine and had kept it preserved in a glass jar.

After I was discharged from the hospital, it took about six months, could be a year, before I could walk normally again. One morning about a year later when my leg hurt, I avoided participating in P.E. class. Then, the P.E. teacher, Mr. F told me in passing, “You’re probably skipping the class using your injury as an excuse,” and went on to tell me “If you keep skipping like this, you won’t get a school recommendation to TS University. Maybe you could get into T University with just the test scores, though.” It was such a weird and unpleasant comment and those became my last memory of him. I don’t recall if he was ever my homeroom teacher, but he was the coach of the volleyball club with the similar unpleasantness, which I joined from my third year in middle school until midway through my second year in high school. I later heard that he died of a cerebral hemorrhage or something just before retirement, in his early sixties—around my current age. In contrast to him, the P.E. teacher who was in charge when I broke my leg, surprised me by bringing me a book when he visited me in the hospital. The book was about poem or some sort of a collection of short essays about meaning of life. Until then, my impression of people doing sports including P.E. teachers are rather biased…I couldn’t imagine they would read books "how can you imagine somebody with such thick arms and thighs ponder about anything beyond the physical reality?", a notion which I am sure many of my big-headed classmates shared. I thought about contacting him recently (yet to have done) to ask him the title of the book he lent me back then…or just to confess how stupid and prejudiced I was back then.

For a few months after being discharged, I visited the hospital weekly or every few weeks for outpatient check-ups with my doctor. Back then, memorizing English vocabulary was still important (for Uni entrance exam), and the waiting times (that was long, like 1/2-1 h, especially since normally there is no reservation in such examinations) were perfect opportunities to kill the boredom and awkwardness of being surrounded by many sick (or injured) people. But, once an elegant, middle-aged woman in a kimono started to talk to me during one of those English vocabulary times. She was probably in her mid-forties and my young self thought she was very old and found it weird that she seemed interested in me. I rather wanted her to leave me alone. At the same time, it was strange that an (old) woman had an interest in me, which gave me a small but some of thrill. Perhaps because of that, when she kept asking small questions to me, I could barely say anything, except a few nods and vague responses like “Yeah,” or “I see.” Even after my appointment, while I was waiting for medication, she sat nearby and glanced at me several times—so I guess she was indeed interested—but I wasn’t able to do anything about her. Maybe because of her formal attire with a lots of makeups...since in another outpatient visit, when I ran into a woman whom I’d met during my hospital stay, we naturally talked during the waiting time...maybe just because when we were in the hospital, we often met on the rooftop bench and smoked together. I did ask her out for tea on the way home. We went on one date once, but after that, I never saw her again. I don’t know what she did for work or where she was from. I still remember her large, captivating eyes, but I don’t remember her name...so as any others I met in the hospital.

Before the surgery, becoming a doctor was one of the vague candidates of my carrier path. I was fascinated by the mysteries of the human body, probably because of Black Jack, the famous medical story comic series by Osamu Tezuka. There are numerous medical stories in comics and TV dramas these days, but back then, it was the only one. When my primary doctor came to visit before surgery while I was talking with a friend (many classmates visited me since the hospital was nearby. Also they kindly brought me copies of lecture notes and home-works, so on), my friend suddenly asked, “What is the color of a brain?”, and it shocked me, since I never even imagined that internal organs may have color other than the color of blood. He was always like that…either write an excellent passage of a short story that I would have never been able to write, or just ask a peculiar question out of nowhere that plunged me into a pit of self-pity over my ignorance. The doctor then pointed to a typical cream-colored locker and said, “Like that.” Hearing that sent a chill down my spine, maybe because imagining the brain with its inorganic color scared me somehow. In retrospect, even though I sometimes played with the idea of becoming a doctor, I must have had no idea what actually doctor has to see: the surgery involved sewing the inner tendon of my ankle, which was nearly torn, and screwing together the broken fibula. They had to make incisions on both sides of my right leg, so afterward, the skin around my right ankle was pulled from both sides, because of that, I was in terrible pain for quite a while. I briefly woke up during the surgery, tried to get up to check what they were doing, but I was immediately held down by people on both sides and sent back to sleep again. Maybe because of all that; the doctor told me during the painful recovery, “You should become a doctor.” If he had said that before the surgery or maybe a year after, I might have casually replied, “Sure,” and actually gone down that path...just because unconsciously trapped by the fact that I had agreed, even if only to be polite. But in the midst of that agony, I thought, I would never want to do a job that would cause this kind of pain for others, and that might have been the moment I gave up on medicine or biology. It’s not like, I regret that subconscious decision of my youth, but these days I sometimes wish I’d lived bit more flexibly.

[shumblingstrangerengineer]

How a dream mirrors my shumbling life

It was a dream about one year ago, that somehow made an impression and triggered my will to change something.

Not much happens in the dream: I was on top of a hill, that was in the middle of nowhere. Along side the hill was a green, rural area, and I was in a hurry--I had to go down very rapidly. The street was not very wide, barely enough for two cars to be able to pass by each other.

There was no reason why I was there. I just had to reach the village at the bottom of the hill. I had to go from here to there. The weather was fine, the sky was blue, the sun was shining, and a warm breeze grazed the fresh grass field. When I looked far, a sight of snow covered alpine summits was visible. None of those mattered. I just had to run. I then found a bike, and pedaled as hard as possible to go down the hill to the village down there.

When I mentioned this dream to somebody, he immediately said

"What a loss!

Why not enjoy the nature? Enjoy the view? Enjoy the weather? Enjoy the day of the life?

Are you going through your life like that? Not taking time to be with your family? Watching children grow? Passing by the life instead of living it?"

And that got me thinking, why the work is so important...it's not as if you are going to make a great discovery to pave the way for humanity. You may be praised by colleagues for your hard work? But as you know it's most likely you won't get any. Maybe from your friends, but not from your work colleagues. As you know very well from past experiences, they rather try to kill you instead of praising you or encouraging you to do more.

So I decided to have "hobbies", many of them. Somehow I picked up this idea from a conversations with one of my ex-students. When she said "I have a lots of hobbies!", it made an impression, like the spreading of a wave on a surface of a pond when a stone was thrown in it. One of those hobbies became doing something for maintaining my health condition. It's been more than a year since I started a daily habit of doing something for it. Like 'every single day' a la "The Rock". I began to feel my surroundings somehow different. My perception of family, friends, relatives, has changed as if I became aware for the first time they are important parts of me.

I don't worry too much about troubles at work. I used to get strongly agitated unconsciously since many of those were not really possible to act or handle quickly. That used to be a big problem as if working hard to move on was the only thing that made my existence worth while. I found that it is not really the case. Finally I may understand what it means by "It's just a job, not personal".

Now I feel like I am not afraid of anything, not scared to do anything new. What I do is for me and for myself, and for the people important for me, no one else.