What You Are Looking for is in the Library

by Michiko Aoyama

There is one reason and one reason only that I work at Eden: it was the only job offer I received.

What will I be doing years from now?

I don’t feel excited any more about achieving a goal.

Hardly anyone in my hometown goes to college in Tokyo, so having people tell me how amazing I was used to make me feel good, but when it comes down to it I’m not amazing at all.

What will I do? I worry about the years slipping by, while I stay on at Eden getting older and older.

See, even previous jobs have the power to influence your image of a person.

“You managed to find employment, you go to work every day and you can feed yourself. That’s a fine achievement.”

“I was working in order to eat, but I never had time to eat because of work—that seemed crazy.”

Oh..

You can decide things, but there’s no guarantee everything will go as planned.

I feel so dumb now for telling the librarian that my job in the womenswear section at Eden was “nothing great.” I haven’t been doing a great job, that’s all.

I am so fed up with my job. What am I doing there? Will I have to put up with this kind of thing until I retire? Unhappily biding my time in an office doing a job that doesn’t excite me?

My job controls me. A job I don’t want to be doing.

“Before I had this place, all I ever used to think about was quitting my office job, but now that job is what gives me the means to enjoy running this bookshop. If the bookshop was all I did, however, then I’d have to spend a lot more time thinking about sales strategies and so on. Which would be far more demanding. And I don’t really want that.”

Genius

I always think that one day I’ll do it, but I never do. I don’t have what it takes to get started.”

“Everybody is connected. And any one of their connections could be the start of a network that branches in many directions. If you wait for the right time to make connections, it might never happen, but if you show your face around, talk to people and see enough to give you the confidence that things could work out, then ‘one day’ might turn into ‘tomorrow.’”

There are so many things to do, but I won’t make the excuse that I have no time anymore. Instead, I will think about what I can do with the time I have.

I found myself now in a position where I was neither fully satisfied with my job nor with motherhood, yet I had to spend every moment juggling both.

I find this sentence really interesting.

Being born is probably the most difficult thing we ever have to do. I am convinced that everything else that comes afterward is nowhere near as hard. If you can survive the ordeal of being born, you can get through anything.”

“It’s a very common condition,”

“Singles are envious of those who are married, and married couples envy those with children, but people with children are envious of singles. It’s an endless merry-go-round.

“Life is one revelation after another.

Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances.

Ultimately it’s all for the best that many things don’t turn out the way we hoped. Try not to think of upset plans or schedules as personal failure or bad luck. If you can do that, then you can change, in your own self and in your life overall.”

From big things to little, there are some things we simply cannot force to go to plan, no matter how hard we try.

How uncanny the way what one reads can sometimes synchronize with reality.

If I put myself at the center of everything, does that mean I always see myself as a victim?

why I always end up wondering why can’t people do things that work for me.

Moment by moment—circumstances always change, quite independently from what we want to do. A family situation, for example, or health issues, or a job might go when a company folds, or one could fall in love out of the blue.”

“Even just knowing what you want to do is a great thing.”

“This didn’t just come to you. It happened because you did something for yourself. You took action and that caused things to change around you.”

I, too, could change, and still be the same inside.

I figure everybody has their own personal timing that works best for them.”

How much had my own thinking limited my opportunities?

I owe my eighteen-year-old self an apology. And it’s not too late. There’s still something I can do

Perhaps my problem all along was not being in the right environment. One where I could make the most of myself.

For so long now I have been trying to walk forward, and only forward. Believing that life is a linear journey that stretches straight ahead of us. If I look sideways now, what will I see? How will my daily life, my wife and daughter appear to me?

Just as every day is equal in value and no less important than all the others. The day I was born, today as I stand here now and the many tomorrows to come.

My plan is to appreciate every new day. And take a wide view of things.

I will not give up on myself. From now on, I intend to gather close all the things that are important to me. I will make my own anthology.