Dear Sh...,

Thank you very much for your letter: I know very well, as those around you do, how much maturity you have achieved with your effort and perseverance since last year, and, of what I know about you in this regard, I'm very proud indeed.

I've recently had the pleasure of reading Swahili proverbs. Among many pieces of West-African wisdom, there was one that stood out to me, which said:

Kupotea njia ndiyo kujua njia. To get lost is to know the way. 道に迷うこととはその道を知ることである。

Do you remember how, four years ago, you invited me to the open campus day at a spacecraft institute in 三鷹, and when we got lost in trying to get to the other campus, we hit upon the Jindai Botanical Garden, and absolutely enjoyed our unexpected visit there? -- You may not have known until now, but that incidence has marked the beginning of my life-long infatuation with plants and gardens, and now, lo and behold, I find myself working at one of the most prestigious gardens in Japan.

The gist of our lesson is clear: that, whenever we think we're lost on the way to our initial destinations, we shouldn't let our sense of loss get in the way of our learning from the experience in which we can truly grow.

This trait of yours, of being able to discover something very valuable and beautiful when having got lost midway through, is a wonderful gift that you possess. Now that you're lost on the way wherever you were heading, it's time for you to discover things that really matter in life.

I said last time, briefly, that growth is often achieved in the process of recovery from a crisis: in the almost twenty years I have lived so far, the period in which I feel I have grown most is seven months from March 2020 when I sank into a suicidal state of mind in which I could not think anything but destroying life altogether. Many things I came to experience since then, but eventually, I began to convalesce (= to recover from an illness), and, looking back three years later, I have the deepest conviction that it was in this period of recovery that I discovered things that have mattered in my life. --- Here, I should note that I was, though miserable, fortunate in a few respects: I was fortunate that I had a reliable medium of expressing my feelings (namely, the piano); I was fortunate that I had my mother who did not abandon me; and, above all, and this is the point I want to make very clear, I was fortunate that I did not choose to deceive myself into thinking that I was not miserable. As far as I had felt life's most lowering misery, so far growth and maturity was possible for me. --- Hey, what was it that Hn… and I used to say? That you can't lose weight unless you're fat, in the same way as cherry blossoms can't shed their flowers unless they have once bloomed. Similarly, true maturity is not possible unless one has truly struggled, and neither is happiness possible unless one has felt sadness. In French we'd say « les extrêmes se touchent » (the extremes meet).

I have written a very long paragraph. But my purpose here is to share with you my experience from when I was in a similar situation three years ago, thereby, I hope, alleviating your sadness and casting to it a shining light of hope. My mother (and Cicero) has taught me that friendship is what allows us to double our happiness and to halve our sadness: and it's by sharing and communicating that we can enjoy the effects of augmentation and diminution in friendship.

Flowers are so cute! My mother and I wondered where did you get these lovely things.