My life stage

                                 

network of circle
by Michiko Kaneyasu

                    

 my life stage 

　When I retired and moved from Nagoya to Tokyo to be with my mother in her later years, I started to pay more attention to my everyday life. The see-saw of work and family life became a see-saw between me and my mother, and then now between me and my family.

 The environment (society) that surrounded me, which I have felt through balancing work and family for 40 years since I got married, expanded from my parents' social connections after retirement to the society I knew through my new job in Tokyo, the society of friends I met again and new people, and the society of each family I saw from afar.

 Not only did it expand, but I feel like I have entered a deeper stage. I am in my 70s. It is when I become aware of the deepening of my relationship with this society that I feel that I am definitely approaching the end.

 My occupation has been the rehabilitation of the weak. Now I am in the position of the weak. The word weak can be considered in terms of both mind and body and social aspects. The categorization of the weak requires the relative existence of the strong. The strong in terms of mind and body are those who are healthy and have good athletic ability, while the strong in society are those who have economic power, leadership, and vested interests. In the first place, it is not true that there are no weak without the strong, but I think it is extremely difficult to find such a society on Earth. Humanity has survived on this Earth by creating history through the exchange of the weak and the strong, facing each other and joining hands.

 Starting with the pandemic, internationally shared issues such as large-scale disasters caused by rising sea temperatures, frequent active volcanoes due to crustal movements, and the decline of forest resources due to man-made or naturally occurring wildfires have become the main focus of news in recent years, along with war. The impact on our lives is so complex and large that it cannot be summed up in a single word: global warming.

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