The title is a Japanese proverb. This phrase came to my mind today again.
It means “What one likes, one will do well”. “Do what you love and the money will follow you.” This has been one of my mottos in my life. I have been studying English for more than 3 decades. There were lots of challenges at various stages in my career. To work as a professional interpreter, I studied a lot and read A LOT. I also “ate a Japanese-English dictionary.” (We called this way when we read through the whole Jan-En dictionary) Before meetings and conferences, I needed to “cram” technical terminologies in the field, such as IT projects, medicine, clothes, airplanes, cars, compliance, and many others. I had to know and be able to use those worlds for the conversation between the experts and stakeholders in the meetings. All these process and work is a very stoic one. I have learnt that whether we can become a professional bilingual, it will depend on whether we can persevere those stoic and strenuous efforts. One day, I decided. “I will enjoy this.” I decided to enjoy the whole process of studying and working. I was telling myself that I would enjoy everything in my work and study. I kept receiving an inspiration, “”Enjoying” would be inexhaustible source of energy to keep working and learning.” “If you keep enjoying and appreciating the joy of work and study, you will never get tired or exhausted.” (To be continued) In this chaotic world, I see the battle between justice and evil has been getting more intensified day by day.
However, through these battles, we, who have a faith in God and believe that divine nature dwells within us all, are becoming stronger. I practice the song below almost every day. I have flying to Washington DC so many times last 7 years. I have flown over the beautiful land of the United States. I have moved by the beauty and dignity that I felt in the town DC and other places. The land below me in the sky filled me with awesome of wilderness. I remember the beauty of big mountains, rivers, plains, and all kinds of sceneries from the sky. I love this country. I love America. People in this country have a “power” to express our will by voting rights, which could decide the future of the USA, Japan, my ancestry land, and all over the world. “America the Beautiful “ (extract) O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years, Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee, And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! When I was waiting in a line at Ross (our women’s favorite clothes shop!) in town the other day, I overheard the conversation of young girls standing behind of me.
One girl said, “I stopped using my smartphone, and decided to read a good book.” I thought, “Good for you!” in my mind. I think we might have been wasting lots of our precious time on smartphones, iPhones, and others. I do not say everything is meaningless. I myself have been utilizing them a lot! They are really helping my work, life, and to relax. My point is we should not be a SLAVE of them. We need to make sure we are the one who is a COMMANDER. We need to be the side of controlling, not to be controlled by them! My husband and I stopped watching TV long time ago. (We even did not hook them up for a while) We use our own tablets and pick up whatever we want to watch. Even when I stay at the hotel for work, I watch my iPad. On business trip, I am always busy and TV takes too much time. These days, TV has so many functions and so many channels. It is so slow to boot. It takes time to select, change channels, and find what I want to watch. Once I find it and finally start to watch it, the commercials start. Commercials keep going on for a while until I can finally watch the news or something. So I just gie up, shut it off and go back to my iPad. I believe our souls are given an eternal life by God. However, our life with THIS physical body we are given right now has a limited time. Now we are entering the era of “100 years of age”. If we count we live up to 90 years old, the total hours is about 788,400 hours. 1/3 of the time may be our sleeping time. Every day, the clock is ticking. How we are going to live with it? That will decide our life. Every day is so precious. |
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An Interpreter for JCU Archives
April 2021
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