Chapter III. Diary, ‘Money Is The Faith And The Conviction’ - Letter From A Persevering Friend
Chapter III. Diary, ‘Money Is The Faith And The Conviction’
When the young-adult man was seventeen years old, he started keeping a diary. He continued for about three years, but he stopped. In his later years, he took on writing again, but he no longer wrote on papers; he just used his computer to type. On rare occasions, he jotted down on papers but it did not even take half a minute to count how many pages were written by his hand in total since he started typing his diary. Much of writing was saved electronically, while a part of it had been printed out. The diary that he was going through now was saved electronically. He found the entry titled, ‘Money is the faith and the conviction’.
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There is this consensus that one needs to adapt to the given condition. I cannot tell how many people have told me this and how many more will tell me this even though I have no desire to listen to their preaching; what is more, generally speaking, those who preach do not practice what they preach. So, I only feel disgusted when I hear this. But that is not such a major issue; I only let it go. That is also not exactly what I want to discuss in this diary entry. What I want to discuss is that ‘money is the faith and conviction’. I started by bemoaning about the idea of adaptation because there is a correlation between that and what I am about to discuss. After I left Japan, I was labeled ‘dropout’ in that country. It is true that I dropped out of a prestigious university there, but that is not what this ‘dropout’ meant. This meant that I am not complying with the convention that exists. I am not writing an essay on Japanese culture studies, so I take a few examples just to explain what it means. There are many customs and rituals. There are also conventions. For example, one is expected to get married; he/she is also expected to do so at a certain age. There is also a relatively concrete idea of whom that person should get married to. What kind of job he/she should get. How he/she should behave. How much money that person ought to make and how much of it he/she ought to save. Dress code. Makeup code. Where to live and how to live. What to drink and what to eat. Now, Japan is a relatively modernized country, so rules are not as strict as those in many other countries. But the point is that, even then, there are conventions; I was not following them. Dropping out of a reputable university was an anti-convention, and this is why I was labeled ‘dropout’, or so did I believe.
I do not say that I do not mind that labeling at all. After all, I am a mere mortal and when that word or a different word of the same meaning is spoken with the vicious tone, I feel a little antipathy. When it is spoken numerous times, I feel irritated. What can I say? I should not bother, but I cannot help it. But that is not even a major issue; that is how the world is. A few years later, I entered a respectable university in US; however, since the university was not well known, my labeling in Japan did not change. I eventually graduated; I took four years to get my B.S. degree. Still no change in the labeling. Two years after this, the labeling suddenly changed. What happened? I got a job at a computer software company in New York City and started earning a respectable salary. Was that about the name, ‘New York City’? Partly. But what really mattered was money. All of a sudden, I was not a dropout.
At this point, I did not care about labeling much; I had no immediate plan to go back to Japan ever since I moved to US, and once I moved to New York, my mind was set, or so did I believe. Perhaps, more accurately, I was convinced that I would never move back there. But three years after that, I was forced to pay attention to this labeling again. For a number of different reasons, I decided to quit the job and strike on my own. To be very honest, there was a lot of confusion and chaos at the time that I made that decision. Also when I was in the city, living life and working there, so many things were going right that coming to that decision was aching. Retrospectively speaking, I followed a certain principle. I could not go on faking that what is perceived good by others is also good according to my definition. Not that there were so many problems, but, according to my definition, there were a few imperative questions that needed to be answered. And to me, that mattered, even though it did not make much sense to those who surrounded me. I needed to serve myself first and foremost. I am the center of the world, and if the center collapses, then the whole world collapses. Now, I am not trying to say that I am the king of the world or I ought to become one. I am not trying to say that I am the Caesar of the 21st century or want to become one. I simply faced the authentic fact that happiness is defined in my own terms and no one else’s.
That decision, however, forced me to move back to the country where I was born and grew up. And this was when I suddenly became ‘dropout’ once again. To summate, the principle did not matter. Customs or rituals did not matter, either. In the end, what mattered was money. Money is the faith and the conviction. Now, does this mean that I suddenly decided to chase after money in order to destroy the labeling once again? No. Does this mean that I felt great despair? Not, exactly. It means that I have a deeper understanding of the world. Most people, in the end, justify a person based on whatever money he/she has. If he/she has a strong financial status, this person is often viewed as good and accomplished. Now, if I tell this to people, I am so certain that they pronounce they disagree. They say that money is not their faith or conviction. They say that they do not judge people based on their financial status. I do believe that there ought to be a result in order for one to attain success; however, success is not the result itself. Success is the process in which one reaches or attains a certain result. Now, if I tell this to people, those who understand what I am talking about would probably say that they agree with this statement. Most of them are liars or they do not understand what they are doing. Money is the faith and the conviction.
As a side note, I suppose that, when this rule does not apply to a person close to me, he/she is a true friend. Personally, I believe that one can only have a few such friends in life. I can only have a few such friends, true friends. I am ok with that.
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He felt that the idea presented was a refined one and felt a certain comfort. The statement did not present a solution, but he found it relevant today. And that realization allowed him to put the current situation into perspective. As he gained the sense of objectivity, he continued reading his diary.
