おもに
えらぶこと
いきるかたち
the burden / the choice / the shape of living
The bar was located in a basement in Aoyama, down a flight of concrete stairs that smelled faintly of damp earth and old roasted coffee beans. It was a place that seemed to exist outside of the standard flow of Tokyo time.
It was raining outside—a cold, persistent November rain—but down here, the weather was irrelevant. The air was dry and smelled of burning paraffin oil and expensive bourbon.
A Thelonious Monk record was spinning on the turntable in the corner. Ruby, My Dear. The piano notes hung in the air like smoke, jagged and beautiful, finding the perfect balance between dissonance and resolution.
I was sitting at the far end of the counter with a woman I had known for fifteen years. She was tracing the grain of the wood with her fingernail. She looked tired. Not the kind of tired that comes from a lack of sleep, but the kind of tired that comes from carrying a heavy, invisible object for too long.
“What is the hardest decision you’ve ever had to make?” she asked. She didn’t look at me. She watched the bartender carve a sphere of ice with a sharp knife.
I took a sip of my whiskey. It was an Islay single malt. It tasted of iodine and the sea.
“That’s a big question for a Tuesday,” I said.
“I’m serious,” she said. “Was it leaving the architecture firm? Was it the divorce? Was it moving back to the city?”
I listened to Monk hit a chord that shouldn’t have worked, but did.
“No,” I said. “Those were just logistics. Those were just moving furniture around a room. The hardest decision was internal. It happened on a unremarkable morning, while I was waiting for the kettle to boil.”
“And what was it?”
“I decided to be happy.”
The Gravity of the Abyss
She stopped tracing the wood. She turned to me, her eyes flat and skeptical.
“That sounds trite,” she said. “It sounds like something you’d read on a calendar in a dentist’s office. Choose Happiness.”
“It sounds trite,” I agreed. “But it is the hardest labor in the world. It is the architectural equivalent of building a skyscraper on a swamp.”
I spun the ice sphere in my glass. It moved with a heavy, satisfying inertia.
“For years, I let the world happen to me. I was a leaf in a gutter. If it rained, I got wet. If the wind blew, I moved. I leaned into the negativity because gravity pulls you there naturally. It is easier to be sad. It is easier to be cynical. Cynicism feels like intelligence, but it is actually just laziness. It is the path of least resistance.”
“So you just… switched it off?”
“I said: Fuck it.”
I said it quietly. The curse word felt heavy and solid, like a black stone placed on the mahogany counter.
“I realized that everything comes and goes. The pain, the joy, the boredom, the terror. It is all just weather. It passes through the house. But the house? I control the house. I control the thermostat. I decided that I would no longer let the weather dictate the temperature of the living room.”
The Monkey and the Cross
I gestured to the empty stool next to me.
“We are not alone here,” I said.
She looked at the empty seat. “What do you mean?”
“The Monkey,” I said.
“The Monkey?”
“We all have one. It is the invisible weight. It is the cross we carry. For some, the Monkey is a memory of a parent who didn’t love them. For others, it is the crushing fear of poverty. For me, it was the deep, genetic belief that I didn’t deserve to be light. That suffering was the rent I had to pay for existing.”
I looked at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. I looked at the shadow behind my own eyes.
“It is human nature,” I said. “We are biological engines designed to survive, not to be happy. Evolution doesn’t care if you are fulfilled; it cares if you are alert. So we carry the Monkey. We feed it. We let it whisper in our ears that the world is dark, that people are cruel, that we are broken. We lean into the negativity because it feels like safety.”
“And how do you kill it?” she asked. “How do you get the Monkey off your back?”
“You don’t,” I said. “That’s the trick. You cannot kill the Monkey. It is part of your structure. It is welded to your spine.”
The Mechanics of the Breath
“So what is the decision?” she asked. “If the weight is still there?”
“The decision is how you walk,” I said.
I sat up straighter on the stool. I felt the tension in my shoulders.
“Every morning, the negativity pulls. The Monkey tightens its grip. It digs its claws in. It tells me to look at the cracks in the pavement. It tells me to be angry at the rain. It tells me that the future is a catastrophe waiting to arrive.”
“And?”
“And I breathe,” I said. “I observe.”
I put my hand on the counter.
“I look at the rain and I refuse to judge it. I see it as water, nothing more. I feel the claws of the Monkey, and I acknowledge the pain. I say, ‘I see you.’ But I do not let it steer the car.”
It is a discipline. It is harder than lifting iron. You have to remind yourself, ten thousand times a day: I am in control of this machine.
“It’s not about smiling,” I said. “It is not about toxic positivity. It’s about posture. It’s about feeling the crushing weight of the cross, feeling the absolute fatigue of the soul, and standing up anyway. It is deciding that the weight will not break your spine today. It is a refusal to collapse.”
The Walk Home
The record ended. The needle clicked into the center groove. The silence in the bar was thick, heavy, and comfortable. The bartender began to polish a glass, the cloth making a soft shhh-shhh sound.
“To be happy,” she repeated softly, testing the weight of the words.
“To be functional,” I corrected. “To be the master of the house, even when the roof is leaking.”
We paid the bill. We put on our coats. We walked up the narrow concrete stairs and out into the Tokyo night.
The rain had stopped, but the streets were slick and black, reflecting the neon lights of the taxis gliding by like deep-sea creatures. The air smelled of wet asphalt and roasted sweet potatoes.
I felt the weight on my shoulders. The Monkey was there. The history was there. The sadness was there. It was heavy. It would always be heavy.
I took a deep breath of the cold air. I watched the steam rise from a manhole cover, disappearing into the dark.
I didn’t push the weight away. I didn’t pretend it wasn’t there. I just adjusted my stance. I planted my feet. I decided, again, in that second, to be happy.
“Let’s walk,” I said.
And we walked, carrying our crosses, moving steadily under the indifferent, beautiful, broken sky.
life 