You are on the way to happiness

I like net-surfing and visit web pages one after another when I have time.
While I was doing it yesterday, I found an interesting article: “How to make money―the interview with Rie Saito, the No. 1 hostess in Ginza” (msn.com).

Rie Saito cannot speak because of her handicapped ears. So she always has something to write on and to write with. Her customers write something on a sheet of paper and hand it to her. Then she will return her reply to him also by writing it on another sheet of paper. That’s the only way of her communicating with her customers.

One day she met a customer who was a manager of a company. He complained to her and wrote the letter 「辛」on the paper. The letter meant “hardship.” She wrote back 「幸」on the same sheet of paper by adding an horizontal line on the top. It meant “happiness”. The man shed tears of happiness, thanking her for her advice.

I graduated from Gunma Prefectural Kiryu High School in 1964. Mr. Tomihiro Hoshino is also a graduate of that school, my junior, a year younger. He graduated from Gunma University and became a gym teacher of a junior high school. While he was demonstrating his performance of vaulting, he fell down and broke his neck, causing his body to be paralyzed. You can read his nine-year life of struggling in the hospital in this book: 『愛、深き淵より』(2000年立風書房).　His struggle continued for nine years. It must have been very hard for him to recover from his injury. He married with a nurse who had earnestly taken care of him and he has lived his happy life since then. I imagine that his happiness now is a gift of his nine-year-long struggling.

Rie Saito said to the man, “Your life may be hard now, but you are on the way to happiness.” I suppose that this advice to him must be a gift from her long hardship. We feel we are superior or happier than handicapped people, but the fact is the other way around. Handicapped people are much happier becasuse they overcame their hardship and now enjoy their happy lives. We understand the importance of health after we have experienced our illness. Our life may be more filled with hardship, sadness or unhappiness than with pleasure, joy or happiness. But with Ms. Saito’s advice in our mind, we may be able to live our lives, however hard it is now or however hard it will be.