Second of two parts “What I like, when I like, as I like – that’s how I’ve lived,” writes economist Takuro Morinaga in President (Aug 16). “If I think it’s right I do it, whatever others may think.” His smile in the photo accompanying his article is triumphant, challenging.
“Just try to wipe this off my face,” it seems to say. Last December fate itself tried. A routine medical check found stage 4 cancer.
He was 66 years old and thought he was healthy. Suddenly he was dying. The photo was apparently taken post-diagnosis, not pre.
“Work,” he writes, “I’ve always treated like play.” Now he’s making a playmate of death. The shock of the diagnosis is scarcely expressible.
He began treatment. The drugs they gave him were dreadful in their side-effects: “I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t drink, couldn’t eat. Everything was fog, only one thing was clear: death.
” “We die in any case – why live?” is the title under which President groups several articles, each one in effect an attempt at an answer. Broadly speaking, there are two, one positive, one negative. The positive one is, because life is good.
The negative: Because death is fearful. The 22 contributors to the magazine’s feature are unwavering positivists. Death may win in the end but it’s a foul victory, whereas life in defeat loses none of its beauty.
Initial despair yielded in Morinaga to a stronger than ever will to live. The time is short. Let it be the more inte.