A once-frozen gajumaru tree has come back to life, while my own list of responsibilities continues to grow. As work piles up, I find myself reflecting on why certain tasks are so difficult to decline, even when I know others could probably do them just as well.
A gajumaru tree that I had once assumed had frozen to death has finally begun to sprout again. Now it has become wonderfully overgrown.
I recently moved it into a larger pot, and I hope it will have a little more room to grow.
Watching it live so vigorously in such a small world of soil makes me feel oddly affectionate toward it.
At the same time, it makes me question my confidence in myself, knowing that its fate depends largely on my care.
My lecture manuscript, due tomorrow, is finally nearing completion.
I check every text slide with AI, which actually takes more time than writing them myself. Still, the process helps me catch mistakes and discover things I did not know, so it has been worthwhile.
That reminds me—I wonder what happened to the manuscript that I drafted and then entrusted to one of my junior colleagues for completion.
Preparations for next year’s conference are already piling up.
I managed to secure a sponsor, which was fortunate. However, it also increased the number of organizer lectures from one to two.
Yesterday I received a request from next year’s pathology meeting to serve as a session chair.
Since I proposed the workshop, it is only natural that I should chair it. But that raises new questions: How much guidance should I give the speakers? How should the presentations be coordinated?
And what else is waiting?
There is another conference next year. I also need to continue working on a minor revision of the diagnostic guidelines discussed at the recent meeting.
A smaller conference is scheduled for September, and an international conference—held here in Japan—is coming in October. I have not even started preparing for those.
My routine workload has increased as well. More physicians have joined the laboratory department, and helping them settle into their roles has become part of my responsibility.
Work is beginning to pile up.
When I list everything like this, it strikes me that most of these tasks could probably be handled by someone else.
Even so, they still need to be done, one by one, so there is no choice but to keep moving forward.
The people who ask me to do these jobs probably expect a certain level of results. But from my perspective, none of them are tasks that only I can accomplish. I am not special. I simply happen to be the person responsible for them right now.
The work came to me, and because I followed my father’s advice never to refuse a reasonable request, it gradually accumulated.
Come to think of it, last year I had to decline a task that I had been asked to do every year. This year, the request never came.
That was certainly a relief.
Yet it felt a little lonely as well.
And it reminded me that this is simply how work functions.
It is not that I dislike delegating responsibilities. At the same time, I feel reluctant to turn down work when someone has chosen to ask me.
There may be other unfinished tasks that I have forgotten about.
If so, I will deal with them when they reveal themselves.
The gajumaru continues to extend its branches little by little.
I will try to do the same and gradually untangle this growing stack of work.
Perhaps both trees and people grow the same way—one branch, one task, one day at a time.
・・・
Vocabulary for Learners
overgrown
Covered with excessive growth; growing wildly or thickly.
生い茂った、伸び放題の
sprout
To begin to grow; to produce new shoots or leaves.
芽を出す、発芽する
entrust
To give someone responsibility for something important.
任せる、託す
coordinate
To organize different people or activities so they work together effectively.
調整する、まとめる
delegate
To assign responsibility or authority to another person.
委任する、任せる
accumulate
To gather or increase gradually over time.
積み重なる、蓄積する
pile up
To increase in number until there is a large amount to deal with.
山積みになる
reluctant
Unwilling or hesitant to do something.
気が進まない、ためらう
responsibility
A duty or obligation to take care of something.
責任
untangle
To sort out something complicated or confused.
もつれを解く、整理する
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