The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

by Ichiro Kishimi

Well, suppose that you, as a student, regarded the community that is ‘school’ as absolute. In other words, school is everything to you, your ‘I’ exists because of school, and no other ‘I’ is possible without it. But naturally, there will be occasions within that community when you run into adversity. It could be getting bullied, or not being able to make friends or keep up with your schoolwork, or not adapting to the system of the school in the first place. That is to say, it’s possible that with regard to the community that is your school, you won’t have that ‘it’s okay to be here’ sense of belonging. YOUTH: Yes, absolutely. That’s quite possible. PHILOSOPHER: When that happens, if you are thinking of school as being everything to you, you will end up without a sense of belonging to anything. And then, you will escape within a smaller community such as your home. You will shut yourself in, and maybe even turn to violence against members of your own family. And by doing such things, you will be attempting to gain a sense of belonging somehow. What I would like you to focus on here, though, is that there is ‘a more separate community’ and, moreover, that there is ‘a larger community’. YOUTH: What does that mean? PHILOSOPHER: That there is a larger world that extends far beyond the confines of the school. And every one of us is a member of that world. If there is no place of refuge in your school, you should find a different refuge outside the walls of the school. You can ch...