月: 2016年3月

Advice

Because you are students a big part of your life is listening to other people. You have teachers. You have parents. You have grandparents. You have uncles. You have aunts. You have coaches. You have upper-classmates, your “sempai”. You have a lot of people talking to you all the time. You will probably get a lot of advice from these people. Your mother, your father, your grandparents, your teachers, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone older than you will tell you all the things you should do. They have a lot of advice. Maybe too much advice.

You are a student here at Otemae and you have many things you can do in the future. You can do so many different kinds of jobs in the future. You can have so many different kinds of careers. Which one is the best for you? What school should you go to in the future? What should you study the most? What do you need to do so you will be successful?

Who should you listen to? Who has the best advice for your life?

Maybe the most important thing to remember is that you will get a lot of advice from people around you, but you must live with the choices you make. Only you live your life. Only you will have the result of choices you make. It is good to listen to good advice, and of course you must listen to your parents and family, but you must live your life and think about your own future.

Sometimes it can be good to go out and ask people for the best advice they got from a parent, or a teacher. Sometimes the good advice someone heard from a friend or parent can be good for you and me too.

Many people who have successful careers, or who are leaders in the world have some very similar ideas to each other. I will share their advice with you today.

Deepak Chopra talks a lot about how to have a balanced and healthy brain. He says that we need balance to work hard, sleep proper, keep healthy bodies, and to have time to connect face-to-face with people around us. You need to take care of yourself. Sounds like good advice.

John Donahoe, who is the president of eBay, talks a lot about how it is easy to walk away from hard times, but the best things in life are from not walking away but working hard and fighting for something you want. Sounds like good advice.

Judith Rodin, who is the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in America talks a lot about how we need to work hard and grow, not to make other people happy, but to do it for ourselves. We should not work hard so that other people agree with us, but we should work hard so that we can become a full person and be good for other people. Sounds like good advice too.

These are only three examples, but there is something that is very important to what they all say. The message is that we should not worry about what other people want us to be. We should not be afraid of others, or our own feelings. We should not listen too much to what other people say. Most answers are inside you. Your own heart knows what you can do with your life.

I hope that during this spring vacation time you can have some time to think about who you are and what you want to do with your life. It is a great gift you have. Who do you want to become? The answers are in your own heart and mind.

This is the week in history where we remember the terrible earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku area of 2011. This week we will see reports of the past. We will see the terrible waves of the sea crash into homes and buildings again. We will hear the voices of the people who suffered. We will hear their pain again. We will remember again the terrible, terrible disaster of those days.

15,894 people died in the Tohoku disaster. 6,152 people were injured, and 2,562 people are still missing. The damage was huge. So many buildings were crushed, road and railways were destroyed, bridges washed away, and dams were broken. There was no electricity, no proper water, and nuclear power trouble as well. It was only a few years ago, but the memory of that time is still very new in our minds.

Even though the terrible earthquake and tsunami were five years ago, the Tohoku area is still very damaged. Many homes and buildings are still broken. Many roads have garbage and broken cars and trucks on them. The cleanup of the area will take a few more years for it to be completed. The reminders of the disaster are everywhere through the area.

But the spring season will still come. The air will grow warmer. The trees will grow new leaves and flowers. The cherry blossoms will come again. Life will find some way to come to us. Spring will come again to all of Japan, even in Tohoku. It is natural for us to feel very dark and sad when we have experiences like earthquakes and tsunami which kill so many people. Maybe we feel that death cannot be stopped. But that is also true of life, and of nature. New life cannot be stopped. New flowers will come. New animals will be born. New people will come. Life is unstoppable. Hope is unstoppable.

We are all very worried for the people of Tohoku who still do not have their lives back. They still need support. They still need help. They need their homes again. They need their roads, and trains, and schools, and cities again. They need to have the hope of spring again and they need help from the rest of the country. This is an important time for us to remember what happened five years ago, and to also be able to look to find ways for Tohoku to be whole again.

The spring air comes here to Otemae too. The trees are soon ready to show us their new colors. Life is unstoppable for you too. Spring brings us also a new feeling of opening our eyes and becoming awake. As you become awake, what would you like to do this spring? What new thing would you like to try?

The flowers of spring come to all of Japan. Let’s hope that there will be more life this year, less death, and that a healing wind will come to the Tohoku region.