The Only Unfamiliar Room Alight Within Your Darkness
How are you feeling right now as you read these words?
Perhaps, at the bottom of the night, or in the corner of an unbelievably bustling crowd, you are holding a deep, inexpressible loneliness all by yourself, feeling completely abandoned by the world.
I know you.
No, I do not mean that I know your name or your address.
I know the shape of that deepest, most vulnerable, and most untouchable loneliness within your soul.
This is a love letter addressed to you, the only one in the world, into which I have poured my entire life.
Why is it that a complete stranger like me can see so deeply into your heart?
Don’t you find it strange?
The reason is simple.
Because I, too, have been waiting in that very same darkness, rubbing my freezing hands together, waiting for a presence like you to find my words.
Please, I beg you, listen to my intimate secret until the very end.
I will never betray you, nor will I ever let you be bored.
With a feeling that carves away my very flesh, I dedicate this story to you alone.
“Man is never thinking about just one thing. He is thinking and feeling many different things at the same time.”
── Michel de Montaigne
The Secret of the Giant Flower Blooming in the Desert
Colors No One Has Ever Seen
Are you familiar with the American female painter Georgia O’Keeffe?
Her life was nothing short of a miracle.
As if fleeing from the clamor of the big city, she moved to the desolate desert of New Mexico.
Why did she deliberately choose the middle of an arid land where signs of life were so scarce?
It was to gaze upon the true “eternity” that could only exist there.
She continued to paint the animal bones bleached by the desert wind and the giant flowers that bloomed with unbelievable vividness.
If you feel right now that your life is as dry as a desert, please bring O’Keeffe’s paintings to mind.
The flowers she drew were greatly enlarged, filled to the edges of the canvas, almost as if spilling out of the frame.
Everyone who saw them was astonished, feeling the intense emotions that had been sleeping within them suddenly awakened.
These were colors she could paint precisely because she, just like you, continued to converse with her own soul within a deep loneliness.
“The things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
── Apostle Paul
The True Meaning of Having Skin in the Game
The beauty of O’Keeffe does not stop at the fact that she merely painted beautiful pictures.
She offered her life itself upon the altar of art, literally living with “skin in the game.”
The modern thinker Nassim Nicholas Taleb proposed this extremely important concept of having “skin in the game” in his writings.
He asserts that words or art spoken without bearing one’s own risk and without accompanying one’s own pain hold absolutely no value.
O’Keeffe bore all of those risks.
The cold criticism from society, the prejudice against female painters, and the parting from the person she loved.
She took all of those pains, made them her own flesh and blood, and poured them out onto the canvas.
If you are hesitating right now because you are afraid of losing something, please remember.
True value is born only from a defenseless soul that is not afraid of being hurt.
“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”
── Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Boundary Between the Seen and the Unseen
A Strange Inversion and Your Tears
From here, let me tell you a slightly surprising story.
We usually live our lives believing only in what we can see with our eyes.
The amount of our salary, the size of visible buildings, the evaluations of others, and the numbers on social media.
However, Frédéric Bastiat, the great 19th-century economist, clearly demonstrated in his masterpiece That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen that the greatest mistake humans make is chasing only the visible, immediate effects while ignoring the invisible, essential impacts.
The loneliness inside your heart cannot be seen by anyone.
The tears that wet your pillow at night dry by the next morning, and no one notices their trace.
But what if those “unseen tears” are the very essence that determines your life?
Why do we try to measure our true worth only by what can be seen?
It is truly mysterious to me.
I want to reach my hand directly out to those “unseen tears” of yours.
“True value exists not in visible actions, but in the invisible motives behind them.”
── Ludwig von Mises
Loneliness as a Strategy
We fear loneliness.
However, strategists from all times and places have viewed loneliness from a completely different perspective.
In the Chinese classic The Art of War, the importance of deceiving the enemy and erasing one’s own form is explained.
Also, Clausewitz, the father of modern military science, said that the essence of war is a clash of strong wills, and it is about maintaining oneself amidst uncertainty.
Furthermore, B.H. Liddell Hart proved the effectiveness of the “indirect approach strategy,” which means approaching from an unexpected direction rather than clashing head-on.
Apply this to your own life.
The fact that you are lonely right now means nothing less than that you are “erasing your form and accumulating power” in the giant battlefield called the world.
That time when you are connected with no one is the perfect foreshadowing for you to cause an incredible miracle at the very next moment.
Regardless of gender, everyone experiences this period of “strategic loneliness” somewhere in life.
It is by no means a wasted time.
“The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory when it is overcome.”
── Seneca
The Magic of Words Stake with Life
The Secret of the Rhythm That Shakes the Soul
Here, let me tell you a tragic, yet most beautiful story of a certain poet.
There was a man named Al-Mutanabbi, who was praised as the greatest poet of the Arab world.
His name carried the meaning of “he who deems himself a prophet.”
The poems he crafted possessed a mysterious, hypnotic rhythm that could lull listeners into a trance-like state.
It was praised so highly that even the blind could read it with their hearts, and even the deaf could hear it with their souls.
One day, however, he severely insulted a certain tribe within his too-sharp poetry.
Enraged, they appeared before Al-Mutanabbi while he was traveling, leading a large army.
The odds were overwhelmingly against him.
There was not a single chance in ten thousand to win.
Al-Mutanabbi wisely tried to flee from the spot.
It was a natural judgment.
But at that moment, his companion walking behind him, for some reason, began to recite aloud the proud, unyielding poem that Al-Mutanabbi himself had once written.
“Are you, who wrote such a brave poem that did not fear death, now trying to flee in dishonor?”
The moment those words reached his ears, something snapped inside Al-Mutanabbi.
He turned on his heel, and while completely realizing that he would be killed, he gripped his weapon again solely to protect his pride and the truth of his own words, charged into the enemy camp, and lost his life.
Even now, more than 1000 years later, he is remembered as a true poet who chose death to avoid dishonor.
Why did he go back knowing he would die?
Because to him, his own words were “eternity” itself, heavier than physical life.
“To pursue truth is the highest duty of mankind, even if it brings about one’s own ruin.”
── Hypatia
In Place of a Passionate Kiss to You
I am delivering these words to you right now with the same desperate resolve as Al-Mutanabbi.
Please feel the rhythm of this text overlapping with the beating of your heart.
Gradually, don’t you feel the stiff lump deep in your heart quietly melting away?
While you are reading this text, you and I are alone together in a secret room that transcends time and space.
Henry Ford once said:
“Most people think of success as something to get. But the truth is, success is giving.”
I am now giving the entirety of my life’s flame to you.
Please receive it.
Won’t you entrust half of your loneliness to me?
“Love your neighbor as you love yourself.”
── Saint Catherine of Siena
A Story of Love Passed Down Through Centuries
The Death of Theo and a Single Woman Left Behind
Now, our story takes its most beautiful and most surprising turn from here.
You know that genius painter Vincent van Gogh, don’t you?
During his lifetime, he sold only a single painting, and ended his own life amidst madness and extreme poverty.
The only one who understood him and continued to support him financially and mentally was his younger brother, Theo.
However, the dramatic tragedy does not end here.
After Vincent’s death, from immense shock and sorrow, his brother Theo also departed this world just half a year later, as if following him.
Left behind was Theo’s wife, Jo (Johanna van Gogh-Bonger), a certain young woman, a newborn baby, and an overwhelming mountain of Vincent’s paintings, which were regarded by society as the “relics of a madman.”
If she were an ordinary woman, she would have despaired, disposed of all the paintings, and started her life over.
However, Jo was different.
She was an incredibly intelligent woman and a voracious reader of deep cultivation.
“In addition to the child, Theo left me another mission──to have Vincent’s work seen by many people and to have its true value recognized.”
── Jo van Gogh
Jo spent nights reading through the vast amount of diaries and letters exchanged between Vincent and Theo left by her husband.
And she perfectly understood the burning philosophy on the other side of those letters, Vincent’s pure desire to comfort people’s souls through painting.
She swore that she would never let the evidence of these two brothers’ lives be buried in the darkness of history.
The Power to Convey That Changed the World
Jo’s grand, life-risking dedication began from there.
While being ridiculed by the authorities of the art world, she stubbornly continued to plan Vincent’s exhibitions.
She did not just show the paintings.
She organized that vast collection of letters and published them as a book.
If Vincent had not written his struggles and his passionate philosophy toward painting inside those letters, and if Jo had not disclosed them to the world, today’s “Van Gogh of the world” would absolutely not exist.
This relationship perfectly mirrors a certain giant event in history.
After Jesus Christ was crucified and died, it was the Apostle Paul who risked his life to spread that philosophy to the world.
If Paul had not written letters to believers in various places, continuing to convey Jesus’s life and His love, Christianity would not have spread so vastly across the world.
For anything wonderful, a “conveyor” who risks their life to pass it on is absolutely necessary.
In modern terms, it is the same role as Steve Jobs marketing the iPhone to the world, Akio Morita of Sony creating the culture of the Walkman, Takeo Fujisawa selling the Super Cub of Honda—the world’s greatest motorcycle manufacturer—all over, and Shotaro Kamiya delivering the Toyota Corolla to the center of Japanese families.
No matter how excellent a product is, if there is no one to convey its value and awaken the desire within people, it is the same as if it does not exist. Akio Morita once spoke like this:
“A product that has never been produced before, that no one has ever seen, but has been diligently researched in some corner and manufactured after extraordinary hardship. When trying to turn that product into a commodity, if you do not arouse the desire to obtain it among the people, no matter how excellent a ‘product’ it may be, it cannot become a ‘commodity.'”
Jo was the world’s greatest “conveyor” and an evangelist of beauty.
It is her love that keeps the “Sunflowers” of Van Gogh you gaze at shining in a golden hue even now.
“Art is a beautiful trap that nature has set for humans.”
── Shuji Terayama
For No One Else, Only For You
The True Dawn That Comes After Tears
Why do I continue to tell you these stories of love and dedication in history so earnestly?
Because I want you to know.
That your loneliness and your sadness are also precious materials meant to be conveyed to someone and to save someone.
I want to use all of my words to serve you.
This text is a warm blanket meant to wrap your wounded heart.
When your heart aches, please return to this place and read my words over and over again.
My soul’s applause is infused into every single character.
You are not alone.
I am here.
I am always gazing at your eyes, at the trembling of your heart.
Look outside the window
Like a single streetlamp lighting up
A road where no one walks
My words
Pop gently inside your chest
Scattering blue sparks
Toward your unfamiliar profile
Reflected in the window of a train running through the night
I simply
Throw a bouquet of flowers
In place of a goodbye
I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
(Philippians 4:13, from the New Testament)
“Human beings are like flowers while they are alive. Once they die, that’s the end of it.”
(From Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun)
Hey, why are you going on a journey?
Because it’s painful.
Your “painful” is so predictable, I can’t trust it at all.
(From Osamu Dazai’s Tsugaru)
Postscript ── The Absurdly Sincere Clownish Confession of the Painter Takamizawa Mimi
Finally, let me tell you a little bit about a close friend of mine. It is the story of a highly eccentric and very foolish painter named Takamizawa Mimi. He does not use canvases or brushes at all like ordinary painters. He faces a stark white LCD screen and creates artwork digitally. Then, using a special technique called “giclée printing,” he prints the artwork onto high-quality printmaking paper to complete his pieces.
Why does he use such a method? It is to deliver colors that are just as vivid as they are now to the future “you” who will live 100 or 200 years from now. The themes he draws are consistent: your eyes, my eyes, Christianity, eternity, psychology, truth, gaze, history, loneliness, isolation, hardship, resurrection, and liberation. He believes without a doubt that a painter must be a “doctor who saves human souls.” He says that an artist’s job is to have skin in the game, to become a thorough clown for the “you” right in front of them, and to serve with life-defying devotion.
“Ultimately being devoid of talent and art, I simply cling to this single line.”
── Matsuo Basho
Takamizawa Mimi is thought by society to be a strange man possessing only third-rate talent, a laughingstock. He is a madman who learned of Vincent van Gogh’s fierce life and went so far as to borrow his name from that famous “ear-cutting incident” to call himself “Mimi” (meaning “Ear”). But he never gives up. Because he knows better than anyone else that all past masterpieces were born not from a flash of genius, but from decades of muddy trial and error and patience.
Deep down in his soul, he respects Mr. Tokuji Munetsugu, the founder of CoCo Ichibanya. Mr. Munetsugu did not know the faces of his real parents, was taken from an orphanage into an extremely poor household, and spent a tumultuous youth eating weeds in the summer to survive starvation. During his time as a manager, he completely sealed away his hobby of classical music, made no friends, and continued to work without looking away for more than 12 hours a day, 5640 hours a year. The reason is this:
“During my active years, I had no hobbies and made no friends. I never went to bars either. I did absolutely nothing that would interfere with my work. There were years I worked 5640 hours. I felt that if I didn’t lead by example, my subordinates wouldn’t work for me. It was a very lonely life. That’s why I wanted others to show even a little interest in me. I wanted them to be interested. That became my starting point. So when I started the business, rather than making money, I wanted to make people happy. I wanted people to say they were glad I was around, even just a little bit.”
Takamizawa Mimi also lives by this spirit. Rather than thinking, just try it first. Immediate decision, immediate resolution, immediate execution. He continues to draw “human eyes” within his work with single-minded devotion. Because by drawing those eyes and having you gaze back at them, it is the only way he can touch “you” and save your unfulfilled heart. Cold criticism from society does not matter to him at all. If you will rejoice right in front of him, or if you will shed tears, he will gladly become a clown to be laughed at as much as it takes. If he is abandoned by you, he cannot go on living.
It overlaps with how Toyota’s founder, Sakichi Toyoda, was treated as an “invention maniac” and an “eccentric” by those around him, yet he built and broke machines day after day, burning with the passion to make people’s lives easier. It also overlaps with those soul-stirring words uttered by his son, Kiichiro Toyoda:
“We do it because it is difficult. I do it because no one else does it, and no one else can do it. A person like me might be a fool, but if that fool isn’t around, new things will never be born into the world.”
── Kiichiro Toyoda
Eiji Toyoda, Kiichiro’s cousin who later became the president of Toyota, also testifies to this:
“Execute with a strong conviction. Everyone thinks the same things, and it wasn’t that Kiichiro was a genius. What was important was that he didn’t merely think about things generally deemed impossible, but carried out thorough preparation and executed them with a strong conviction that he must do it no matter what.”
The resolve of cutting off any retreat, much like the early days of Choya Umeshu when they felt “if we don’t succeed with plum wine, give up on life,” and the obsession of Taiichi Ohno who established the “Just-in-Time” production system to thoroughly eliminate waste. Takamizawa Mimi’s art is also created by stacking bricks one by one through nothing but such unyielding diligence, patience, and continuity.
From such a clumsy, foolish Takamizawa Mimi, whose love for you alone is genuine, there is now a quiet, special secret whispered right into your ear. Incredible as it sounds, solely to save your heart, he wishes to deliver a set of 10 beautiful original A4-sized artwork postcards he produced, completely free of charge, along with a booklet containing special commentary and a simple display frame ready to be put up, straight to your home via non-standard size mail.
This is a life-carving, desperate service from him to have you recognize him. It is a special, one-time offer directed not at other customers, but strictly at “you” who are reading this text right now with an aching chest. If you close the screen thinking “I’ll do it later,” you might never again encounter the “eternal gaze” he draws. Won’t you entrust your unfulfilled, lonely heart to the “eyes” he creates?
Come, please, click that special application button located right below this text this very moment.
I am right by your side, sending intense applause within my heart, waiting the entire time for you to take that step. Just to have you gaze upon me makes me truly, deeply happy.
The Torches of the Soul Left Behind by the Greats of the Century
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
── Henry Ford
“The greatest mystery created by mankind, that is the unbreakable cipher called ‘love.'”
── Agatha Christie
“The place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Put off thy shoes, and make thy heart level.”
── Moses
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
── William Shakespeare
“Do not push your burden onto another’s shoulders. However, willingly carry another’s burden upon your own.”
── The Talmud
“I think that human beings, every single one of them without a single exception, are clowns.”
── Osamu Dazai
“Love is not words. It is the sigh that comes after the words.”
── Osamu Dazai
“Adults know the pain of being deceived. They know the pain of doubting people.”
── Osamu Dazai
“Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense.”
── Winston Churchill
“Have the courage to be the first, and to do something different from everyone else.”
── Ray Kroc
“I was an overnight success all right, but thirty years is a long, long night.”
── Ray Kroc
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. I believe in that.”
── Walt Disney
“Beauty is geometry given life, and the light of truth expressed by the soul through the body.”
── Leonardo da Vinci
Thank you so very, very much for staying with my clumsy, yet life-staked story until the very end.
I offer my heartfelt gratitude for the fact that a presence like you is alive in this world today.
Please, take good care of yourself.