Yesterday’s lecture is finally behind me. I managed to get through it somehow. For a little while I can relax, but the next task is already waiting—the preparations for a research meeting that I will organize.
My field of pathology is rather narrow and deep. Because of that, there are very few pathologists involved in it.
Even though pathologists themselves are not abundant, most of them are occupied with cancer diagnosis. Naturally, manpower and funding tend to flow toward those areas. Less popular fields receive very little of either.
Our research group sometimes feels more like a small club of enthusiasts. We complain to each other from time to time, but somehow keep things going.
Once again I will have to look for speakers from this small circle. Young doctors are few, and finding people is never easy.
Sometimes I wonder how long I can keep doing this. Yet after spending so many years in this field, it is not so easy to walk away.
I suppose I will just continue until the day I am quietly replaced.
Time passes quickly. It is already the middle of March.
Far too quickly.
I do not know how much time I have left in life, but at this pace it feels as if life might end before I have the chance to do anything truly enjoyable.
I cannot even say whether I am happy or not.
At the very least, happiness is something that only the person himself can decide. It is not something others should judge.
When people say,
“Oh, what a pitiful person.”
it is often nothing more than an intrusion.
And yet there are certainly people whose lives are shaken by the decisions of a handful of tyrants. That is still happening in many parts of the world today.
Even for myself, I cannot be certain that Japan will never be drawn into war. In some ways, one might even say that we are already in a kind of economic war.
If there were a clear scale to measure happiness, perhaps things would be easier to understand. But such a scale does not exist.
In the end, it is difficult to know.
Including the question of why we live at all, life remains something profoundly mysterious.
