The Elephant

I.
It was six men of Indostan
    To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
    (Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
    Might satisfy his mind.

Hisao had hardly been gone for a couple of minutes when I heard someone run by behind us, followed by Hisao hurrying up to the desk again, oddly out of breath for someone having just run from the back of the room.

"Did you see a girl run past here?" he panted. If anything, I'd only seen her pass by the corner of my eye, so I asked him what she looked like, not sure how I could help. "She had long, dark hair and...um...scars on her face?" he said. You could hear in his voice he was hesitant as to whether this was a socially appropriate description, but whether it was or not, it was clear who he was talking about.

"You wouldn't be talking about Hanako, would you?" Lilly asked, fishing in her schoolbag for her cane.

"Yes, that's her," he replied, and I could see in his face that he sensed Lilly's worry as well. "She was in the back reading, and I tried to talk to her, but I guess I scared her off or something?"

"Oh dear. Yuuko, if you'd excuse me, I'd better go find her."

"Sure," I told her, "I'll just hold the books until you get back." Hisao looked about as worried as Lilly by then, and asked what was going on, but she apologized and told him she'd explain later as she hurried out to the hallway, leaving us alone.

Hisao's shoulders slumped and he sighed, "I don't think I'll ever get the hang of this place..." He turned to face me and blurted out, "Did I do something wrong?"

I shrugged. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! I was just looking for some books and she freaked out and ran off. The worst I might have done was to look in her general direction a few times."

Obviously since Hisao was new he couldn't know about Hanako. She didn't seem to have any friends beyond Lilly, and while I don't think it was because any of the students were particularly unfriendly, Hanako seemed to have a lot of anxiety about personal interaction. "Well, she is a very timid girl," I told Hisao. "She can be jumpy sometimes, and I don't think she's accustomed to talking to others much."

If anything, Hisao looked more confused. "Isn't that sort of, um, strange?"

"I don't know," I said, "It's just how she is, I think."

Now Hisao appeared frustrated. "How do I deal with these people? If I force myself to act casual, it feels phony, but it's like I'm supposed to be ignoring the elephant in the room!"

I knew I should say something, but what? "I think it's an elephant only if you feel that way." For some reason, this made Hisao smile after a short pause. "Did I say something stupid?" I asked.

"No, it sounded really wise, actually. I guess it's more about me than anybody else."

It made me feel a little nervous again, but in more of a good way. I've had people tell me I'm nice, and sometimes even smart, but "wise"? That's not one I hear too often.

Sometimes I wonder, though. Elephant or not, there are certainly things we don't talk about that nonetheless are still there. Many of the students at Yamaku have disabilities that are immediately apparent, while others are at this school for nothing obvious to the outside observer. (I never found out what Hisao's reason for attending Yamaku might have been.) But even those of us without some limitation that might be termed a "disability" have things that potentially hold us back from reaching our full potential in life, don't we?

Maybe the real elephant in the room is that for many of us, struggling to understand disabled teenagers in a fictional high school is the only way we can come to recognize the way in which life can often seem to make emotional cripples of each and every one of us.

The Wall

II.
The First approached the Elephant,
    And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
    At once began to bawl:
"God bless me!—but the Elephant
    Is very like a wall!"

I'm sure the students at Yamaku are familiar with the concept of pain, but that certainly doesn't make them unique. Pain is a universal experience, but there are certainly some students here who have had to experience it in ways that most of us can be glad we are spared.

While Hanako's scars probably don't cause her any physical pain in the present (at least I hope not), whatever trauma she went through that caused those scars must surely have been intensely painful. While most likely not so intense as that, new students like Hisao and that girl Miki Miura are clearly still in recovery from whatever trauma sent them to this school in the first place. The state of medical science is such that there exist numerous anaesthetics to deal with physical pains ranging from an everyday light headache to the horrifyingly unthinkable searing of burns across half our body, but as much as many of us may wish it to be, medicines designed to save us from our emotional pains are difficult to find and tend to be far less effective.

I know many of the students here have had difficulties in their past that I could probably never relate to, not having a disability. Those who have had their bodies disfigured in an accident or because of some sort of disease no doubt experience an emotional pain that comes from the loss of what their life could have been, and the way their bodies once were. Beyond that, many of them may have lost friends and family, either literally losing their lives in the accidents that caused their disfigurements, or having them withdraw from their lives in the discomfort that some feel in the presence of a disability that they can't relate to.

The problem is, each and every one of us—disabled or not—has in some way experienced emotional pain, and as there is essentially no medical method for managing such pain, we all to one degree or another make the decision to put on emotional armor, or build an imaginary stone wall around our hearts. I once heard someone say "Love is like a gamble. An all-or-nothing thing, like Russian roulette. You'll either experience sweet eternal happiness, or feel the worst pain you could possibly imagine." It seems a bit extreme when put that way, but I know a lot of people who feel like that, and because of that feeling, they decide to never allow themselves to have any emotional attachment to others at all.

It can be strange the way it plays out in real life, though. You might think that avoiding emotional attachment would imply the avoidance of any sort of personal relationships at all, but often people with these emotional walls will fall very easily into relationships, but ones at a very emotionally shallow level. For instance, someone might have the appearance of being a very popular while in reality having never made many close friends. For that matter, even the one or two "close" friends may be people they only spend time with because they aren't the sort to pry into their personal life. Actually, I'd wager that most people have friends they invest much time and conversation into, but never create any real understanding between them. Now that I really think about it, what may be the most tragic aspect of such a friendship is that while probably everybody longs to have someone who really understands them, each friend will likely assume that the other doesn't have that desire.

I think it can be hard for anyone to trust someone else enough to bring them into an intimate relationship, but while shrinking away from emotional intimacy, a person might find it surprisingly easy to jump into a relationship of mere physical intimacy so long as they can separate out the emotional side of things. I can easily imagine a girl being more than willing to go to extremes to give physical pleasure to her boyfriend even if it meant doing something awkward, uncomfortable, or even somewhat physically painful so long as she could use the physical aspect of their relationship to control their emotional connection. Sure, society stereotypes men as being the sort that look for sexual gratification while avoiding emotional intimacy, but it's precisely because of the truth in the stereotype that a clever but emotionally damaged young woman might find it easy to manipulate a boy into the sort of dysfunctional relationship that she thinks will make her life safe. Maybe I'm wrong, but I tend to believe that deep down, everyone wants emotional intimacy, and a relationship like this will only make both parties miserable. Anyway, it's what I've seen in some relationships my friends have been in.

It's probably far more likely that fear of emotional intimacy will cause some to simply shut others out entirely, and they form almost no relationships at all. Someone like that might be surrounded by people who are attracted to them physically, emotionally, and/or intellectually but never notice this attraction, instead assuming themselves to be undeserving of friendship, much less love. On the other hand, people with lesser emotional problems might be able to form halfway functional relationships, and yet still put up walls in more subtle ways, either by attempting to keep everything in their life under their own dictatorial control, or conversely by allowing themselves to lose control through drug or alcohol abuse.

But whatever mechanisms a person employs to emotionally protect herself, it seems that an essential part of the overall strategy is to build a façade of some sort. Everyone does it to some extent, but I've seen plenty of people who seemed to constantly be happy and self-confident while behind that mask they were emotional wrecks barely holding themselves together. I really can't blame them for faking it, since almost everyone has experienced the sad fact of life that opening up and showing your true self to others can sometimes lead to cruelty rather than acceptance. It's yet another painful fact of life that the fear all of us have about opening up to others is justified. I've never understood why, but even though so many of us are hurting inside, the default reaction others have to us admitting our pains and fears is ridicule. I wonder who is the more emotionally damaged by this ridicule: the victim, or the perpetrator?

The Spear

III.
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
    Cried:"Ho!—what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
    To me 't is mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
    Is very like a spear!"

It's strange the way we all vary in how much we feel and/or need to have control of our lives. I think I read somewhere that when we are very young children, we take comfort in knowing that our parents have complete control over us. But a big part of maturing is moving out of that mindset and having the authority figures in your life give you more autonomy. There is a balance in there that's healthy, but I suspect few people manage to find that balance.

I'm sure that I have an imbalanced sense of control over my life, and it's tough to admit it, but once again, I don't think I'm alone in this. Having to work two jobs and still not having enough money to be able to do the things I want to do really stinks, but I can't bring myself to up and quit. I guess I'm a fatalist, and just accept that life will be what it will be, and there's not much I can do about it. I don't know where this attitude comes from in me, but I think I see it in some of the students, and for them, it may be related to their disabilities.

Emi, Miki, and Molly can't choose to have their lost limbs back; they have to accept that their lives will be lived with a physical part of them less than a "normal" person would have, just like Lilly has to live without sight or Shizune without hearing. There are a lot of ways to deal with that reality, but not all of them are healthy. I think some would find themselves in the situation of having lost a part of themselves, whether it be a body part, one of the senses, or just general health, and think that their life was over and pointless. That's probably the worst, but I don't think there are any students with that sort of attitude, or why would they even be in school? No, I think for most of these students, they develop a drive to excel in life to defy the very concept of "disabled", and I think there's something good about that.

Still, it would seem that everything has its flip side, and there are students whom I suspect might have taken their struggle to control their life to an extreme, imagining that they have the potential to control everything. It could also be part of that drive to deny the limitations their disability might give them, or it could be a matter of maturing in an unusual way out from under the shadow of an over-dominant parent. Whatever the cause, there is yet still another separation created between that student and the people around them.

One way a person might show it is to create a sort of fantasy world in which they are alone, and in withdrawing from others into this solitary fantasy, they have a form of power over their world because there is nobody else to take that power from them. This is obviously a very lonely prospect, but it's surprising how it both resembles and contrasts with the alternative route.

There are those who make a decision to push back almost violently against helplessness, and put on an attitude that the entire world must bend to the will of the most dominant person in it, and that person is going to be them. Ambition is a funny thing that way. I think everyone would benefit from having a measure of it in their personality. I'm sure I don't have nearly enough! But then there is an invisible line that can be crossed where you go from being a person of purpose to being a person whose purpose is pushed upon all people.

When a person has that kind of attitude, it tends to make them a leader, which is good because the responsibility of leadership gives them an outlet for all that extra ambition. At the same time, it can be bad, because while being in a position of leadership can make you popular, it's much more likely to isolate you. I have an older friend who recently was promoted to a Junior Executive in her firm. At first it was exciting; she got a better office, higher pay, and a staff of people to delegate the more tedious aspects of her work to. It wasn't long before she realized that her old co-workers invited her out in the evenings less and less often, until they finally stopped altogether. Even those last few times they had, there was something she couldn't understand going on; all her friends seemed to find the situation awkward. She had discovered an uncomfortable truth about work, authority, status, and social interaction: No matter what they do, bosses can never really be friends with their employees or inferiors.

Of course in the business world, one can always look for new friends that share one's status, but once one reaches the top, they will be by necessity alone. As a student rising to the top rung of status at their school, that journey can be a very quick one, and once there, there's no place left to go.

While I have a lot of respect for how accomplished Shizune is, (and despite not just being deaf, but one of the few deaf students in the school as a whole) I also feel sorry for her. She's been student council president for three years, and during that time, the student council has through slow but steady attrition melted away to just two students. If anyone might be counted among her friends, it might be former student council members, but I've heard from some who are in the know that her sense of the importance of student council has made her enemies with many students who left. I wouldn't be surprised if her only friend in the whole school is Misha, and yet she treats Misha less like a friend than a servant it seems at times. That's got to be incredibly lonely. For both of them.

The Snake

IV.
The Third approached the animal,
    And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
    Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
    Is very like a snake!"

Sometimes I worry about what must go on in the very personal aspects of the lives of these students. It wasn't that long ago that I was a teenager, and I remember what it's like to have your hormones raging nearly out of control while your emotions are a tangled mess and you're not sure what level of physical intimacy is appropriate between you and your significant other. Thank goodness that goes away when you become an adult.

Never mind, I'm lousy at sarcasm.

I've always thought it unfortunate it seems the peak of a person's sexual drive occurs in the same stage of life in which they aren't quite adult yet, but are entering into adulthood, and so therefore must have a horribly difficult time deciding how to deal with the very adult physical and emotional urges they feel. Maybe it's some sort of strange evolutionary thing, that teenage pregnancy is actually one of the driving factors in sustaining the human race. Of course if that's true, Japan must be doing very poor evolutionarily.

Of course I'm glad it would seem that of those teens in Japan that are engaging in premarital sex, the strong majority of them must be being responsible and using protection of some sort. Teenage pregnancy is a serious issue in many parts of the world, but Japan seems to have dodged that particular bullet, as well as the worldwide AIDS epidemic having hardly touched our country. I wonder if there is something going on that is beyond mere "responsibility", however.

I mean, there is something going on, but it's hard to say what it really is in the end. When I made that comment before about Japan's evolutionary fitness, I was only partially joking. Most people are aware (I think) that Japan's birth rate has been declining steadily since the early 1970s, but perhaps fewer are aware that sometime in the last few years, the birth rate has managed to drop below the death rate, meaning that the overall population of Japan is dropping by hundreds of thousands per year. The weird thing about it (I think) is that studies have shown it really isn't about people being careful and using birth control: people, including teenagers, simply aren't having sex!

This is my own opinion, obviously, but I think there's something unhealthy about it. Not that people should be having lots and lots of sex and pushing out lots and lots of babies; I know a lot of people see the world as having an overpopulation problem, and they're probably right. No, what I think is unhealthy about the whole thing is the disparity in our culture between the perceptions and realities of our sexuality.

Getting back to teenagers, I think it's probably common not just in Japan, but in most first-world countries for teenagers to feel pressure not just from their hormones, but from society and their peers that they should be having sex, when in reality, they may not be emotionally ready for it. So many kids seem to have this assumption that "everybody's doing it" and they don't want to be left out, so they either rush into a physical relationship, or they sink into depression because they feel that their lack of sexual activity must mean something is wrong with them, and all based on assumptions that are probably far from reality.

But it's not just the world of teenagers, of course, because the same studies in which I read that sexual activity among even married adults is on the decline, I read that less than a quarter of Japanese people state that they are satisfied with their sex lives. How can it be that even adults, who I would assume have their emotions and hormones better sorted out than teenagers and in the 21st century have pharmaceutical help if there is a physical problem, aren't able to figure out what they really want out of their sex lives? I think the answer may be in another aspect of our culture that may set us apart from much of the rest of the world.

I believe that we have become unable to be satisfied in real-life sexual relations because for so many of us, the fantasy of what sex could be is often so far out there that reality can never measure up. Media with sexual content is probably produced in every country in the world, but I doubt there is any country that quite measures up to the volume and variety we have in Japan. Sexual fantasy and fetishism permeates our cinema, our literature, our manga, and even video games. While some have suggested that the violence in American culture is in part the result of violent video games, I think the sexuality of Japanese video games is having the reverse effect. Sitting in front of a computer looking at physically perfect girls that you may have the option to get physically involved with in any fashion with simply the click of a button is probably making people lose hope in the possibility that real sex could possibly satisfy.

Real sex is emotionally and physically difficult, risky, messy, and potentially very unsatisfying. Still, I'd like to think that a couple in a mutually caring relationship where both partners have realistic expectations of sex and a desire to please each other can find sexual satisfaction. It's certainly not something you're going to get from a video game.

The Tree

V.
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
    And felt about the knee.
"What most this wondrous beast is like
    Is mighty plain," quoth he;
"'T is clear enough the Elephant
    Is very like a tree!"

I don't think I mentioned that Yamaku is a boarding school. This of course has its advantages, as one of the things that the school is trying to give its students is a sense of autonomy. These students have an opportunity to learn how to take care of themselves and work through everyday tasks such as shopping, cooking, managing transportation from place to place, and so forth. I do wonder about a generally unspoken problem this presents. While yes, these kids are nearly adults, most of them are still technically children, and yet how much time do any of them get to spend with their parents?

Family is important. This seems like such an obvious statement, but at times you can wonder whether people really know this. Surely when you're very young, family is everything to you, but when most kids reach adolescence, there's a sense of wanting to distance themselves from family and make their lives their own. I'm sure that there is some way that this is part of human personality development that I don't really understand, but while it may be healthy for teenagers to rebel in some fashion, is it healthy for parents to simply give in and give up?

I don't know if it's common, but it's far from unheard of for parents to be the ones pushing their children away. You have to wonder what such people think being a parent is about. Is it about loving, teaching, and nurturing your child to be the best, most well-adjusted person they can be, or is it something entirely different? Some parents seem to see their children as something like rivals for their attention; children demand investment of a lot of personal time and self-sacrifice, and some parents can't seem to handle this, expecting their children to give back something in order to make them worthwhile. Some parents don't fully understand their children and their needs, and aren't willing to try whatever it takes to grow closer.

Perhaps worst of all, some parents simply aren't there. Some of them are gone because some tragic fate has taken them away, but there are many others who are gone from their child's life out of their own choice. Parents that simply don't want to deal with children probably wish they could find a way to get away from them, and if they have the money to do so, wouldn't sending their children to a boarding school be convenient?

I hate to assume; just because someone's child is in a boarding school doesn't mean that they are using it as a tool to not have to be a parent, but I do often wonder why it is that I almost never see parents visiting their children here. It's not like it's something you'd expect to see every day, but maybe it would be a fairly common occurrence on weekends? I don't know. I may be missing it happening since I'm usually busy working, but I've never even once seen a student bring a parent to see the library or have a cup of tea at the Shanghai. At least the latter seems like something that would have happened a handful of times throughout the school year.

I find it a shame that there are so many families that seem to have this sort of dysfunction of a near-complete disconnect between generations. There are a number of aspects to a healthy relationship between a parent and child that it must be very difficult to get by without. Of course we all understand the way that very young children need their parents for both physical and emotional nurture, but does the role of a parent ever really go away in a person's life? Parents act as role models, emotional supporters, and life mentors and they do so whether they want to or not, and whether they're good at it or not. A parent who is never around teaches their child that they can't depend on others. A parent who is abusive teaches their child unhealthy problem-solving.

Of course in many ways the worst thing about it is that someone who is the victim of dysfunctional parenting is going to be missing the one thing that they need to deal with those emotional problems. When someone has hurt you, betrayed you, or abandoned you, who would be most appropriate to turn to for comfort and support than your parents? But when it's your parents who have done those things...? Who is left to turn to? People turn to people around them to act as substitutes for the roles their parents left empty, but in looking for an emotional surrogate, too many end up turning to people who look and act just like their parents did, because that's what they know.

You know, maybe it's the understanding of how challenging a tightrope act it is to be a parent that makes so many of them want to opt out. But in the end, it's not optional.

The Fan

VI.
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
    Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
    Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
    Is very like a fan!"

The last few years of high school are usually an important time for people. I mean, all the years of schooling that you have are important in the sense that you're always learning, but it's in your high school years that you are presented with choices that will determine the outcome of your life. There are so many decisions and influences blowing you this way or that to the point where it's not always easy to see which choices will lead you down a path that will have a good ending.

I think one of the things that makes the process so particularly daunting is what they call in economics "opportunity cost." There is always an awareness that for any action you choose to make in life, there is a side-effect of closing off numerous other choices you could have made, but are now lost to you. If I take this class, I won't be able to take that class. If I join this club, I won't have the time to participate in that club. If I pursue a romantic relationship with this person, then I can't reasonably pursue one with any of a handful of others who might have been possibilities. In fictional settings, people have the luxury of exploring any path they want the plot to take, and if they don't like it, they can backtrack and make different choices to rewrite the story, but real life doesn't work like that.

Of course the real problem with opportunity cost in life is that the more you think about the plethora of options that you could have chosen in life but didn't and all the possibilities of experiences, relationships, and knowledge you could have experienced as a result of them, each and every choice you have to make in life can seem to be burdened with an immense weight of possibility and regret. Sometimes, given the emotional impact of our more intimate relationships, I think that people can get bogged down in worry that they may have chosen the wrong person, or even that choosing the right person was denied them by a twist of fate.

I think I've heard it talked about in countless movies and books that there might exist for every individual a particular, specific person who is their "soulmate" and a great deal of life's energies should be devoted to finding this person. Sometimes there is a worry that in a world of six billion people, your chances of finding that soulmate are so slim as to be a virtual zero probability. And sometimes there is a worry that one may have already met one's soulmate, but missed the chance to connect.

This can be traumatic for a lot of people, obviously. I think many people have a mental picture of what their perfect mate would be like, and they lament, "I will never meet her/him." never realizing the futility of mourning the loss of a relationship that never existed. Not that I would say that it's wrong to dream! And it's certainly not wrong to have, well, "standards" I guess you'd say, as to what sort of people you're seeking for a relationship; everybody needs to have an idea of what would make for a compatible companion. The problem would be the assumption of such a narrow definition of possibility that nobody in reality could possibly fit a role that has been custom-made to be filled by a fictitious persona.

Life is obviously going to be tricky, and there are going to be difficult decisions that don't work out for the best. Not so long ago, I had a boyfriend, and, well things didn't work out in the end. When I look back, though, I don't regret it. I had a fun time while it lasted, and even though there are a lot of things about the relationship that I don't fully understand, like every decision in life, it was a learning experience. If we were meant to be together, then it seems reasonable that we'll somehow get together again. If not, then what's the use belaboring it? You'd have to be crazy to think that there was some sort of conspiracy plotting against your personal happiness.

Yes, the decisions that we make can often be wrong. They can often hurt the people around us, or even be self-destructive. In the end though, a person can't make up for these mistakes by agonizing over every decision and lamenting at what was lost instead of trying to see what was gained. The healthy thing to do is keep moving forward, deal with reality, and let go of what could have been.

The Rope

VII.
The Sixth no sooner had begun
    About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
    That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
    Is very like a rope!"

It's strange that as much as effective communication is really the basis of all human relationships, it can really be a difficult prospect. I mean, sure, we're all supposedly speaking Japanese, but I don't think I'm the only one who's ever had the feeling that we might as well all be speaking different languages from one another what with the way we can seem to talk right past each other. We all want to find a way to bridge the disconnect between ourselves and others, but closing up that emotional distance can sometimes seem such a daunting task that it's more of a dream than reality.

Words can be so elusive, and can often fall short of what we may be actually thinking in our minds. It's hard enough to put together words to form sentences here with the leisure of writing on a computer at my own pace, but when one adds to that the challenge of speaking off-the-cuff to someone face-to-face in real time? That's some real pressure. Not only is it hard, but you have to face the fact that when speaking in real time, you might pop out the wrong thing, and find that your words cannot be taken back, as much as you might want to do so. Words can heal, but they can hurt, too.

That's why choosing words is not a simple challenge, but an important one. The fate of a relationship could hang on the difference between a sentence with the word "me" and the word "us" while both sentences may have been meant to express the very same concept. When you said "us", did you mean you and me, or did you mean you and some other person? If you meant you and me, do you really have the right to speak for me when apparently I can barely speak for myself? Confusion like that hopefully is more likely to make us laugh than cry, but it could go either way, couldn't it?

And that's just for those of us with no unusual impediment to our communication skills. I can't imagine how difficult it must be to manage effective communication with the loss of either sight or hearing. A large portion of our communication is non-verbal body language, and I've heard that as much as people sometimes talk about lip reading, it's difficult to the point of near-impossibility for deaf people to learn how to communicate with hearing people who don't know sign language. The way that I sometimes think about how horrible it is that we never truly connect completely with another person, I don't think I could fathom being completely shut off from a large portion of the world around me due to a barrier like that.

But then maybe that barrier is no more or less profound than the barrier that exists between our brains and our mouths. Just trying to make it possible to let someone inside our personal world when our minds' thoughts are a microcosm of abstract concepts that words only barely approach is huge in itself. Or did I already say that? Ugh, I think it's particularly difficult to express this idea in words when the idea is that words often do not suffice to express the things we really mean. If I could express it satisfactorily, I'd probably prove my point to be wrong.

While of course we all can feel confident that our thoughts are our own, many of us may feel that life would be better if we could have someone who could understand us so completely that they didn't have to ask us questions that we could never seem to find the right answers to. The almost constant lack of understanding could possibly be the loneliest thing there is, knowing that nobody can ever express their true feelings so that others understand.

But do we give up trying to communicate because of this futility? Of course not, and I think that's why there such a thing as "uncomfortable silence"; if two people are in the midst of conversing, and suddenly find it difficult to continue speaking, usually that silence is far worse than the spoken awkwardness. We know we should be trying to speak, even if we don't know what to say, because otherwise, how will we know anything of each other at all?

The Argument

VIII.
And so these men of Indostan
    Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
    Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
    And all were in the wrong!

In the end, what is it all about?

Life is full of difficulties, and sometimes we focus on the most obvious ones like an obvious disability, never really putting much thought into all the little things in life that stand in the way of everybody. The failure of communication, the sometimes unfortunate obligations to family, the emotional walls we construct, all of those are things that we share to one degree or another, so we don't call them disabilities, no matter how disabling they may be.

I think maybe that's the real issue that I'm trying to put across here. We look at someone who's different, maybe missing a limb or one of their senses, and wonder at how they can overcome that shortcoming, almost never thinking about how all of us have shortcomings that leave us short of what an ideal life would be. How does anyone overcome?

Maybe we don't want to look at that side of reality. Just as few of the students at Yamaku would want to be defined by their disabilities, nobody really wants to let themselves be defined by the personal and emotional quirks that hold us back from living the full life that we might have if only. But maybe we are defined by those things, and maybe it's the overcoming of those problems that is what makes up the real meaning of life.

I don't mean that in a deep, philosophical sense, like we were put on this planet by a cruel deity who says, "I'm going to saddle you with a crippling shyness just to see how that makes you turn out!" I mean that life is made up of interactions and choices between ourselves and others, and the aspects of our lives that make those more difficult are inevitably going to shape the way they happen. We seek out others out of a basic need to connect and not be alone, and in the process, we have to learn how to overcome the barriers between us, both for ourselves and for those others.

Maybe it seems unfair that life won't just hand us happiness on a silver platter, I don't know. I think that maybe it's this process that makes our lives richer, like the way a certain amount of conflict makes for a good story in fiction. Doesn't the happy ending seem so much more fulfilling if the protagonist had to fight to get it? When you had to learn to grow along with friends and lovers, didn't both of you gain some strength from the experience? While it's bodybuilders who say, "No pain, no gain," it's probably a fact of life that applies to more than its physical aspect.

I think that's why people seek out companionship on some level. While it's clear that love and friendship are their own rewards, there's another level on which we instinctively know that relationships are good for our health. What is life without meaningful relationships? If you can't find someone to love, do you really end up living? No, finding someone and figuring them out (while having them likewise figure you out) is what the game of life is all about.

So that's the challenge that life presents us; few of us are literally students enrolled at a school for the disabled, but maybe just about all of us are figuratively. Everyone has limits, but our goal is to make sure that we know where those limits are, and how to maximize our potential within them. That's why we keep on trying in the face of our failures, because we know that eventually, success is bound to happen, and we'll learn and grow in the process.

Maybe what I'm saying is obvious, but I think I myself have been, at times, tempted to just stop trying when it comes to life because it gets too frustrating. I guess if there's anyone reading who had that sort of feeling (which isn't completely unlikely) then it's mainly to them that I'm trying to urge the seriousness of working hard at life. It's a job you have to take very seriously. Do you understand?

The Blindness

Moral.
So, oft in theologic wars
    The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
    Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
    Not one of them has seen!

Katawa Shoujo is a game and a work of fiction, and like all works of fiction, there is a sense in which it's a collection of lies. These are all lies we tell ourselves, but it's not always clear where the lies end and the truth begins.

We can all be delightfully surprised when a shy, quiet little Japanese girl accidentally lets slip an observation of the human condition that is as profound as an elephant is large, and at the same time is perhaps as many-faceted as such a strange creature. Then we can remember that it's all just a character written into a game by a whole team of writers, and wonder what it all really meant underneath the facade of an entertaining little story. What is it that we are really supposed to take with us as we leave the library, beyond a handful of interesting stories?

Physical handicaps aside, all of us at times think we can save ourselves from being hurt by running away from the people we care about. We can blindly follow the wishes of our families out of a misplaced sense of responsibility. We can find ourselves unable to reach out and touch others no matter how creative we are. We can fail to hear what the people around us are trying to say out of selfish ambition and pride. We can even shut ourselves away from the world and wish that the mistakes of our past would just let us disappear.

I don't think anyone ever really believed for a moment that the person writing these words was a twenty-year-old Japanese girl, but who I am doesn't matter when it comes to telling the story that I wanted to tell with these words. I had to tell it for me, and there was a part of me that, even though it may sound cheesy or overly sentimental, had to tell it for anyone and everyone who cared to read. I think somewhere in all of us is a scared and confused teenage boy with a broken heart who needs to be told an easy lie in order to see a deeper truth.

Like Hanako, I've got scars. There are scars that you can see, and scars that you can't, and most of us have some amount of both. In the midst of writing this, I began to see a cognitive therapist in real life to deal with my invisible scars. I'm sure I'm over simplifying the concept, but cognitive therapy consists of telling yourself constant lies about how much better your life is than you think it is until you start to believe it. Maybe life isn't stranger than fiction, but rather is just another form of fiction in its own strange and maybe wonderful way.

I was delightfully surprised to find that a game like this could have messages about the human condition as deep as it does. When it first came out, I had largely ignored it, but then I saw the way it had affected the Internet community and I had to give it a look for myself. It was clearly not just a story about a collection of beautiful girls, but girls with a collection of beautiful stories. Like all good fiction, it had something to say not just about the characters in the story, but about the readers, whoever they happened to be, because we all deal with these very same issues in our lives.

I think that's another interesting phenomenon that happened as a result of this, even though I haven't participated much personally; to a great extent, this game has created a sense of community for a lot of people. As Hisao came to see Yamaku as a new home, so fans of this game came to find fan sites as a new Internet home, and from what I've seen, a lot of those communities are above par in the quality of interactions. Perhaps these people are "connected more closely than ever in our shared grief, and our shared happiness." I'd like to think so, anyway.

Well, thanks for reading. The library is closed.

Katawa Shoujo