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note Live: How to Love Your Own Weakness
There was an event like this on note, so I watched it.
But, you see, I like my own weakness. I love it. I think it's cute, weaknesses and all.
But I couldn't explain well to people "why can I love it?", so I listened with hope that I might get a hint.
Thoughts on the live
There were quite a few good hints here and there, but the overall atmosphere running through it—that weakness should be overcome and strength is the enemy—didn't quite sit right with me.
If the title were "How to find a field where you can win," there were plenty of parts I'd think were exactly right, but I listened thinking it's different from loving your weakness.
When Sawada-san said at the start something like a method for turning weakness into strength, I listened thinking "one of my weaknesses is soiling myself, but that's not gonna become a strength," and I felt that trying to lump things into strong or weak, or majority or minority, doesn't quite match my way of thinking.
People are people, I'm me. Isn't that fine?
That said, if I stop here it's just thoughts on the live, so let me write, as a memo, the method for loving your own weakness that came together in my mind as a result of listening to the live.
My own weaknesses
My weakness of will is certified.
Otherwise I wouldn't have gained 20 kilograms since getting married. Even today, in the middle of a diet, I ate a double-gyoza set meal for lunch.
If I start listing my bad points, they come out endlessly.
・Weak in the mornings (will)
・Crooked teeth (physical feature)
・Weak at alcohol yet a lover of alcohol (predisposition)
・Like exercise but low ability (ability)
・Quick to anger, though it's improved a bit lately (personality)
・Unpleasant things show blatantly on my face (as an adult)
・Messy handwriting (education)
These are the cute ones.
・Messing up because of alcohol
・Soiling myself about twice a year
・My room is hopelessly filthy
...I'm starting to feel sad, so I'll stop about here.
Anyway, my own weaknesses are endless if I list them.
But everyone has weaknesses, big or small, right?
Those weaknesses can be overcome where they can be, but even though they say "the soul at three stays until a hundred," at what age is a 45-year-old soul supposed to change?
In this entry I won't write about how to overcome them.
Because I haven't overcome them myself, so honestly I don't really know, and I don't think they must be overcome.
On mental matters alone, there's an entry I wrote a while ago for people with depression, so please see that.
https://note.com/tentus/n/n10da1d53c57d
How to love your own weakness
Despite being full of weak points like this, I love myself.
It's no exaggeration to say the person I love most in the world is myself.
In a world where you don't know whether someone will love you, it's so much easier if you can love yourself.
There's advice I always give when I get consulted with things like "I want to be understood," "I'm anxious about what kind of person the other party is."
Soil yourself
For an adult to soil themselves truly makes your dignity as a human being vanish. By exposing such a bottom, you remove the filter for both yourself and the other person.
Most things are better than this pants-soiling man, and you stop caring about the other, smaller weaknesses.
That said, humans aren't built to soil themselves on purpose.
You absolutely can't force it out with nothing there—humans are strange.
The point is to expose your own bottom first.
Rather than exposing the truly fragile thing at the bottom of your heart, expose some other trivial bottom.
This is less a weakness than a technique of placing yourself in a low position.
The world seen from that low position is super easy.
I won't say you'll definitely find a saint-like person who treats you the same even then. But you'll usually find someone who makes that bottom state even more unpleasant.
When you find such a person, have the courage to keep your distance from them.
The world is made of relationships. By distancing yourself from the person who creates (or would create) that bad relationship, the world becomes very peaceful.
Hello from a low place
And when you look at the world from a low place, you can be very kind to yourself.
Because you're the bottom.
Unpleasant things show on your face? Well, yeah, ah-ha-ha.
Your room is filthy? Sorry, sorry, ah-ha-ha.
I think you'll stop disliking yourself over minor weaknesses.
Conversely, by exposing them skillfully, you become able to build a world of relationships more comfortable for you. Once you get here, you've got it made.
Enjoy every day
Is it forbidden to live happily unless you overcome your weakness?
No such thing.
Within a world of comfortable relationships, whatever you do is mostly fun.
I recently started exercising.
But since I'm fat, I'm super slow. It's not rare for me to finish in the bottom 10% of a race.
But it's fine because it's fun.
I've decided I'll never again meet anyone who says to me, "You're so slow!"
Because if that fun feeling gets chipped away, there's no point in doing it.
I don't think the secret to enjoying life while staying weak is all that difficult.
Yes—by soiling yourself!
(I'm writing this worried whether it'll get across. And on a corporate account, no less...)