Essai 8 — Those Who Flee from Negative Emotions, and Those Who Rise

When people experience a major failure, they often cry and say,
“How pathetic.”

But is that word truly directed only at themselves?
The pain and regret are real, without question.
Yet mixed into them is also a gaze turned toward others.

Look at me.
Comfort me.
At least tell me, “It’s not that bad.”

Within those tears are entangled
a demand for sympathy,
a desire for dependence,
and a desperate effort to keep one’s self-evaluation from falling below a minimum line.

To say “I’m pathetic” already presupposes that one believes oneself to be, at minimum, “a decent person.”
That is precisely why, when that assumption collapses, the weight becomes unbearable.
One can no longer carry it alone and turns to the words of others.
If the expected comfort is not received,
one chooses self-loathing over improvement.

Put plainly,
the introspection is insufficient.
Self-understanding is shallow.

From the moment of a major failure, a person is forced—for the first time—to choose:
to analyze the failure and rise again,
to avert their eyes,
or to brazen it out and remain fallen.

Indulgence itself is not evil.
There are times when one cannot immediately stand up again, and that is natural.

But the moment indulgence becomes an excuse for self-preservation,
it turns into dependence.
Through it, one can see the unwillingness to change.

The wish is simple:
“I want to be forgiven as I am.”

⸻

Those who truly repent do not speak.
They demonstrate through action.

The more someone exaggerates their regret with words, the shallower their reflection tends to be.
They protect themselves by performing the appearance of repentance,
while leaving their inner core completely untouched.

By contrast, those who confront themselves thoroughly and choose resolve without逃げること begin to move quietly.
They appeal to no one.
They silently accept reality.

There is nothing flashy or beautiful about it.
But it undeniably changes a person.
It leads to growth.

As people age,
their way of living seeps into their words, their posture, their very presence.

Those who have continued to flee reveal it
in their expressions, their stance, and the thinness of their language.
Habits of self-justification and the absence of resolve eventually become visible at a glance.

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This difference also appears as the difference between “strength” and “numbness.”

Strength is a synthesis of
the sensitivity to fully feel pain
and the self-control to swallow it and continue walking.

Strong people try to extract learning from pain.
That is why they do not fall easily.
Even when they fall, they gain something and attempt to rise again.
They analyze their limits, compensate for deficiencies,
and continuously build tolerance for wounds.

For those who continue to struggle,
the greatest fear is not pain itself, but
drifting endlessly in the same place,
challenging nothing,
consuming their remaining time through inertia—
“dying while still alive.”

Numbness, on the other hand,
appears as an escape in which pain is not felt at all.
One does not notice, does not think, does not learn, and chooses stagnation.

Some claim this is a rational way to deflect pain,
a clever strategy.
I repeat: I do not call this evil.
After fighting again and again, people can become temporarily incapacitated—
and in the worst cases, completely unable to fight.

But still,

Strength is the endurance of acceptance.
Numbness is nothing more than the inertia of insensibility.

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Truly dense strength is always born by passing through weakness.

Only those who have failed,
tasted fear,
and looked directly into despair
possess the depth of empathy and the thickness of self-insight that follow.

Those who were strong from birth,
or who leapt stages through sheer talent,
sometimes lack this passage.

That is why geniuses and ordinary people often fail to understand one another.

What one does not know cannot be imagined.
Pain one has never experienced cannot be understood.

This structure lies beneath the reason humanity continues to misunderstand one another,
repeating division and conflict.

People do not even know what they do not understand.
And so they cannot see how to approach one another.

Those who try to understand others are a minority who confront this impossibility head-on.
Only those with intellectual curiosity and imagination as tools,
and the resolve to step into the unknown,
attempt to build bridges across division.

When people are forced to learn what does not interest them, they resist.
Coercion often becomes the seed of conflict.

In the end, understanding cannot be cultivated through imposition.
All one can do is wait for the moment when a person chooses to know for themselves.

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Negative emotions are not the enemy.

They can become excuses for escape,
or fuel for rising again.

One may drown in tears that beg for sympathy,
or swallow that frustration and begin to walk.

Negativity can be
a weight that drags one down,
or a recoil that propels one upward.

What separates people
is not emotion itself.

It is how it is used.

Only those who transform negativity into motion
escape nihilism
and arrive at a place that can illuminate others as well.

Salvation does not descend from above.
It is something acquired by those who stand up,
together with their wounds.

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© Taro Kanoe
All rights reserved.

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