You may feel very sad and unfortunate when you think of Japan, the culture-rich former economic power, which was damaged severely by the Tsunami and following nuclear power plant explosions.
It was a historic tragedy. It literally turned Japanese life upside down. Including myself, people got shaken, angry, confused and urged. Many got hopeless and apathetic to deal with the overwhelming reality. I imagine the impact was more than WWII, the 2 nuclear bombs dropped on the mainland. People were not a bit aware of how fragile their modern, safe, convenient life was until the very moment it was crushed. And it crushed extremely quickly and severely. The shock was larger than the bombs that were the final to terminate the long-going suffering.
Don’t get me wrong. It is true that many people lost their lives and some areas have still been ‘untouchable’ because of the Tsunami and nuclear power plant accidents, but not the entire country of Japan is destroyed and contaminated deadly (and this ‘deadly’ is subjective). How badly it has been influenced by the Tsunami depends on the place and individual. But, the fact is that the incident changed many people’s life if not all Japanese. An unmistakable fact is that it made many, many people start thinking of the meaning of their life much more seriously than ever.
It is widely known that when people sense the end of life, they focus on doing what they really want and have to do. You probably have heard or read a story of someone totally changed and started living like a different person after he or she got the death sentence.
At the same time, it is so true, too, that we don’t realize the importance of something until we lose it. The concept of death, the end of our life, may be the only powerful enough wakeup call to tell us our time is limited. The more realistic the end feels the more people think about the priorities.
Japan has been thrown this statement thanks to the Tsunami. Their used-to-be-normal things – power, water, food, home, work, investment, social structure, common belief, everything – all gone so quickly in front of their eyes. And what’s left – the threat of on-going radiation contamination, a death sentence for Japanese. It is not an immediate life threat. This means it can be life threatening as time goes. You had better be aware that you may not live as long and healthy as your parents. This realization forced people to rethink how to live the rest of their life.
It is not an easy job to reconstruct your entire life. I have experienced myself the most confusion in my life, too. But eventually I got tired of being lost. We have nothing much to lose anyway, so live the best as I want.
Do you consider this fortunate or unfortunate? To be honest, I don’t know. But this is what is happening. The Japanese, especially the younger generations, have been working very seriously to live the best. May not be a long life, but they are trying to live as full as possible.
If you have any compassion with Japan, please keep watching it.
Money helps people, so does compassion. But the hope you see in their way of living has huge power, too. Please keep watching those who are ‘in the tragedy’ and be inspired by their life. You will find that you are not only ‘giving’ but ‘getting’ a lot from them.