When you read books in the men's quarters, dreaming of your future,
you ought to set aside time to till the field or weave straw shoes.
By getting your hands dirty with soil that way,
getting bitten by bugs and soiling your clothes, yet you learn the way to keep your heart from being soiled,
and even in the middle of working in the field, you must always keep in mind the writings at your desk.
On top of that, if one is to dream of something for oneself,
one ought to be able to recognize whether what is in one's hand is a sickle, a hoe, a knife, a spear, or a sword.
If it is a sickle or a hoe, you should first gather people, the way you nurture rice with the seasons as your companion.
If it is a knife or a spear, only then should you come out of the field, make armor, and train.
And yet, unable to contain youthful spirit,
if one throws away the book they were reading and rushes off to the battlefield,
or abandons the farm work they were doing and leaps into battle relying only on a hoe,
then, without even knowing whether one is a scholar, a gentleman, a farmer, a general, or a literary master,
it is merely a path that hastens one's short life.
I myself read many self-help, business, and marketing books,
but they are nothing more than the foundational content that really applies only to big companies and executives, the kind of brand or enterprise that has to push such things forward.
And what is even clearer is that they are perfectly correct words.
We live in an era of vast amounts of information and choices, where a choice is not simply one gain, but the giving up of the many other options not chosen,
an era we are buried under.
The reason I leave such miscellaneous writings here, even without knowing much,
is the question: will you just do as you're told, surrendering yourself to the flow of the world like preparatory study?
Or will you live your own life, with your own clumsy but honest diary as a compass?
Because I have come to know that this question is absolutely necessary in one's youth.
I, too, am setting out anew, with the past as my compass.
I'm setting out anew, but the goal remains the same.
My goal is not a dream. The dream is only becoming clearer, and right now I am simply going through that process.
normalstory is, in this way, gathering those who, like me, want to rise up anew,
and together with them
it is for beginning the process of building something larger,
and it has only just taken its first step.
