Stick to your principles
I dream.
Just like my greyhound, Inca the princess of the Inca Empire.
She is running at full speed through the open sea of grasslands.
Come, fly with me. With the wind from her, I leap at destiny.
Filled with love and hope, I am stretching my wings to cross the Mediterranean, where there are no boats full of people who are taking a punt past their neighbours' garden. Because people are treated properly with politeness and appropriate respect by their leaders and societies, where the conventional dominant hierarchy has been melted generously into a new form.
Then, with a sense of relief, I look at my graceful Inca and give her a supportive nudge to run in the open air to the Congo Basin, where the high levels of biodiversity are preserved in a gigantic rich rainforest. Hovering over this wondrous old-growth of green beauty, my lungs, and also Inca's massive lungs, are filled with the freshest air, the exhalation of leaves. It's as pure as freshly squeezed orange juice to free our minds. I am deeply thankful to Mother Nature.
Animals are respected and just live simply, but have such a significant role in shaping the character of their forest home, where there are no footprints and boot prints of hunters.
Mankind is deeply focused on taking no action in the face of depleting animals and trees of nature. This is our significant role for Mother Earth, where heaven does not create one man above or below, nor animals living in nature. It is also called the law of the jungle. This will be my mantra for the rest of my life. Likewise, we should not have one species above another.
While flying over the Eurasia continent, I would like to visit some orphanages. I want to make sure that there are only strong smiling children who can carve out their own life without parents. These prominent children are boys and girls; inevitable misfortune will fall equally, not only on the baby girls, as in the orphanages, where I visited in mainland China. At the same time, chances with high and low standards fall on men and women equally through sunlight sets the forest's leaves aglow; most occupations are opened to all genders.
The way of social co-existence is to protect the rights of the people themselves and seek happiness, and at the same time, respect the rights and happiness of others. Neither violate nor hurt anybody else. This is the wisdom word of Yukichi Fukuzawa written in the book called An Encouragement of Learning, published in 1880 in Japan, just after the country opened its doors to international trade. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern Japan, where men still expect women to do and behave accordingly in the 21st century. I believe that in Fukuzawa's eyes, surely people are men, women, and children; it is not excluding half of the population who bears children with silver tongues which are valued as only gabbing, annoying tongue by the other half of the population. In the 19th century, we abandoned feudalism, where three values, freedom, independence, and equality did not exist. In return we declared that those three values will dominate the society of the new era.
About 140 years later, there is still not true equality between husbands and wives, the education of girls as well as boys, the equal love of daughters and sons in Japan, and, let’s be honest, the chance to become a prime minister. Having experienced world war II, Japan abandoned our own Japanese traditions and introduced Western ones indiscriminately at a tremendous speed. Therefore, the seeded democracy has sprouted and grown so rapidly, like the beanstalk of Jack, toward the money-oriented consumer society. However, I believe that there is a sense of discomfort in the current society, like the castle above the cloud of an unfriendly giant. That is why we chose Yukichi Fukuzawa’s face on the 10,000 bank note.
Now it is a window of time. We must reap what we have sown. 140 years is not long enough, but at least long enough to accept that the crop is not the one we expected and what it was supposed to be. Don’t become pessimistic or fatalistic, instead feel that we have enough time to understand each other and believe that the solution is deceptively simple. Don’t grit your teeth anymore. Let's go back to the starting point.
Children are the key to a bright future. Happy children have safety and love first, then education. Education is the muscle of children’s wings, and not just the medal you got from Karate tournaments. In a healthy education system, children are taught by example, to practice cooperation, and to practice social democracy; that is, egalitarian, or democratic, social relations across class lines. Education should be practical and knowledge and experience through education should be passed generously to the younger generation.
All children are freeing their minds from chauvinist society so they are taught to treat nature, including human beings properly with politeness and appropriate respect, but children are not parental property, nor are they objects of their manipulation. Humanity requires love and should help each other, not hate and bully one another.
All mothers are fully aware that 'Like mother, like daughter'. The future can be made by our everyday actions, we raise our children in favour of equality between sons and daughters, if you smile more, the world shines more.
Now weaving a passage so as to drip golden light on all below, I become many breaths, then the wind rises.
Inspired by Congo Basin and Yukio Fukuzawa
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