Wonderment of Modern Life @(2003.4.24)


 The other day, I was driving in unfamiliar area for some reasons. It was around noon. Suddenly I got very HUNGRY. On that day I was busy in the morning, and I could not have had breakfast. Soon I found a convenience store ahead of me, so I parked the car, went into the store, went to the cashier and said, gA Niku-man(bun with meat filling) and a Piza-man(bun with pizza filling), please,h pointing to the buns in the showcase. I got the two buns for less than two hundred yen. Then I went out, and bought a canned coffee from a vending machine. I went back to the car and enjoyed the two delicious buns and tasty coffee in the car. I felt so HAPPY and RELAXED. I thought, What a WONDERFUL world we are living in!

 Maybe you donft understand why I thought like that. You may think, What you did was nothing special. It is not gwonderfulh at all. It is just a gnaturalh thing that you can buy food or drink. EEEBut it is NOT gnaturalh, really.

 I think I am leading a gluxurioush life. I donft mean that I am rich. As a matter of fact, I have relatively CHEAP lifestyle. I donft spend much money on cars, clothes, foods and so on. But I still think that my life is gluxurioush. What I mean is that living in this modern society itself is very very gluxurioush. In other words, very very BLESSED.

 Thousands of years ago, human beings had to catch animals or at least get some edible plants when they were hungry. But now we can get such delicious buns for only a few coins in a short time. And we can do it even in utterly unfamiliar places. EEEIt is definitely gblessedh circumstances, isnft it?

 Not only food. We can get every kinds of necessities in stores. And we can even get necessary medicines or useful books (information) without much difficulty in this society. Isnft that amazing?
 We can do it because we are living in this developed society. Our gnormalh life is based on this highly-builded world.

 I remember the moment when I suddenly recognized the fact that I was living in the incredibly gluxurioush world.

 One day when I was a high school student, I was shopping in a department store.
In those days at school, we studied physics and sometimes we were given this kind of question : How much ENERGY do you need to move the object X (10kg) from the place A to the place B? EEESolving that kind of questions, I had noticed that we were using a lot of ENERGY to do things in our daily life. Just to come to school needs a lot of energy. And to put my messy room in order consumes a lot of energy, too. In fact, it is not so clear how much energy we need to tidy up the messy room. Physically, it may not seem to consume such a big energy. But it DOES. When we tidy up our rooms, we are reducing so-called gentropyh. Entropy is the physical term which shows the level of disorder. When the entropy is big, it means that the state is disordered. And we need surprisingly big energy when we try to reduce the entropy. When we put our room in order, we move scattered things to the right places. It consumes not only our physical energy but our mental energy as well. Usually entropy is increasing if we do nothing. That means things are going to be disordered if we donft use energy to take care of the room. That is the rule of nature. So, put many things in order against that gEntropy Increasing Ruleh requires big energy. EEEThat was what I had understood.
And suddenly the thought FLASHED into my mind : Then how much energy in the world had been spent on this department store? They needed building this huge store, gathering many kinds of goods, arranging and displaying the goods, hiring the salespeople, educating them andEEE How much energy, how much time, how many people and how much money has it taken to complete this department store? It is IMMEASURABLE. Undoubtedly, tremendous amount of energy, time, and money were spent. Thanks to all of them, I can enjoy shopping here now. This is gluxurioush situation. I should be thankful for this fact!

  And I remember the moment when I recognized the fact that so-called gnaturalh things in our life were actually very gspecialh.

 It was on a COLD day in winter. I was a university student. In those days I lived in an apartment house in Gifu alone. I came back to my room from outside and I really wanted WARMTH. I had an electric heater in my room, but I knew that it would take long to warm the room with it. So I decided to take a hot shower in order to be warmed RIGHT AWAY. I hastily took off my clothes and got in a bathtub of the "unit bath". I turned on the shower and waited for the water to get hot.
  Usually I had to wait some time, for example ten seconds, until the water turned hot. On that day, it took longer. I thought, Because itfs very cold outside, and I just kept waiting. About thirty seconds had passed. The water was still very cold. EEEone minuteEEE Being all naked, I got restless. Maybe something is wrong with the hot shower system. But I WANTED TO BELIEVE that the water was going to be hot soon, so I waited gthe timeh eagerly. EEEAnd a few minutesEEE I thought, PROBABLY something is wrong. EEE I guess I waited more than five minutes after all. I finally judged, DEFINITELY something is wrong and I canft wait any longer!!! 
@Shivering, I called the landlord and told him about the shower trouble. He called the gas company and a repairman came immediately. And about five minutes after that, I could finally enjoy the DREAMLIKE hot shower.
 We usually think that taking hot shower is gnaturalh thing. But it is not gnaturalh at all.  The hot shower system functions only under the gspecialh condition. If the setting malfunctions, we canft get the hot shower. Hot shower is the gift of this modern society. I should keep it in mind.

 Sometimes people make complaints when they wait long to buy something in a shop. In a long line of customers, some people may SHOUT, gIt's too slow! Do it faster!h Others donft shout, but some of them may FEEL the same way. But has they ever thought of the fact that it is extremely luxurious situation when they can get that necessary goods just waiting in a line and pay some money? Has they ever thought that it is gspecialh gift of this modern society?

 What I call gspecialh is not just shopping or taking a shower. For instance, we can talk to our friends anywhere with gmobile phoneh recently. And with the gInterneth, we can get any kinds of information and we can chat with people everywhere in the world. How convenient they are! Amazing! They are, to be sure, "special" priviledges in this modern world.

 In the movie gAwakeningsh --- Japanese title gLeonard no Asa (Awakening of Leonard)h---, Robert De Niro (acting as Leonard) says that we ordinary people have forgotten what life is all about. He says that healthy people gneed to be reminded what they HAVE and what they can LOSE.h Leonard is a patient with difficult brain disease. He excitedly explains what he realized to his doctor, hWhat I FEEL is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life, the WONDERMENT of life!h I watched this movie more than ten years ago, and this scene still remains in my memory. It was impressive. When I watched the scene, I could understand how he felt. And now, as the title of this essay, I quoted the word gwondermenth from this line.

 I think that we should remember how our daily life is blessed. We should remember that we owe our daily life to what people have built before, spending immeasurable time and energy. And thanks to them, we can lead gluxurioush life every day. I often forget this fact, but sometimes I will try to remember the "wonderment of modern life".