What You Are Looking for Is in the Library

by Michiko Aoyama

‘Well, I mean … Anybody can do it. It’s not like it was my dream job or anything I desperately wanted to do. I just kind of fell into it. But I live on my own, so I have to work to support myself.’ ‘You managed to find employment, you go to work every day and you can feed yourself. That’s a fine achievement.’ Nobody’s ever summed up my life in this way before. Her answer makes me want to cry. It’s as if she sees me, just as I am.

‘In a world where you don’t know what will happen next, I just do what I can right now.’

I still don’t know what I want to do, or what I can do. What I do know is that there’s no need to panic, or do more than I can cope with right now. For the time being, I plan to simply get my life in order and learn some new skills, choosing from what’s available. I’ll prepare myself, like Guri and Gura gathering chestnuts in the forest. Because I never know when I might find my own giant egg.

‘Only ever a dream …’ She tilts her head to one side inquiringly. ‘Is that what you think? That it will only ever be a dream? As long as you continue to say the words “one day”, the dream is not over. Maybe it will simply remain a beautiful dream. It may never come true.

The days go by more happily when you have something to dream about. It’s not always a bad thing to have a dream, with no plan for ever carrying it out.’

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 any more. Instead, I will think about what I can do with the time I have. One day is going to become tomorrow.

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

‘Life is one revelation after another. Things don’t always go to plan, no matter what your circumstances. But the flip side is all the unexpected, wonderful things that you could never have imagined happening. 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.

If I put myself at the centre of everything, does that mean I always see myself as a victim? And why I always end up wondering why can’t people do things that work for me.

The playground is big. Madam Mizue’s words still rang in my head. Had she been suggesting I get off the merry-go-round and try out something else in the playground? Never swerving from a path is not necessarily a virtue – isn’t it better sometimes to be honest about what you really want?

‘You may say that it was the book, but it’s how you read a book that is most valuable, rather than any power it might have itself.’

I went with the flow and did what was easiest at the time to achieve what I wanted. Moment by moment – circumstances always change, quite independently from what we want to do.

‘Things change, even if you want them to stay the same. At the same time, you can try to change, but you will still remain the same.’

The merry-go-round had stopped. I was someone else now, on a different path. I had mine and she had hers. We each would travel through our own landscape.

The Earth goes around. We gaze at the moon, illuminated by the sun. Feet on the ground and facing the sky, we go forward, changing as we do. In order to deliver a larger truth to the person looking down at an open page.