Mother – A Source of Reassurance as My Little World Crumbled

The year 2000 started well. I was an ecstatic little boy graduating from elementary school in provincial Japan. Finally, I was joining the “big boys” at the middle school across the street, donning the cool uniforms that I observed in pure envy for the past six years. Change was afoot, and I was so ready to embrace it. Instead, the change was much more radical than I had ever imagined. Instead of moving across the street, father came home one day and notified us that our whole family is moving to the USA, thousands of miles away.

“Anxious” did not even begin to describe how I felt. No friends, no knowledge, no language skills. All of a sudden, six years of schooling was tossed out of the window, completely useless in a new land. That shock was not something that the tears of a young boy can compensate for. Having grown up basically in one country, I knew I had no skills to quickly integrate into a new society for which nobody in my family had little in terms of firsthand knowledge. I would be entirely on my own as I navigate a new schooling system and a social life that came with it.

Mother remained calm while I grew dumbfounded by the news. She remained nonchalant while I felt a constant daze. She didn’t make a conscious effort to comfort, because she knew I cannot be consoled at that moment. She simply said, “a smart boy can succeed in any country, any environment.” It was a line that she would not repeat again until I graduated from Yale a full ten years later. It was her calm and quiet belief in my success that turned the English-less teary immigrant boy into an elite college graduate in his new adopted homeland.

Her words have since remained a source of self-confidence. In a globalized world where the best talents seek out the best opportunities in any corner of the planet, all one has, in the end, is the belief that one can not only survive but also excel and compete in any place, unknown or familiar. One’s family members will not be physically there to accompany every step of one’s journey across the world, but they can still make their presence feel remote by providing reassurances that one can achieve greatness in one’s own ways, even when one is lost or depressed in a new place.

For me, my mother is that source of reassurance, and she will continue to be as long as I remember her words. In the more than ten years since I set foot for the very first time in America, I have been on a constant journey of self-discovery, not limited to any particular locale, social group, or profession. Some of these discoveries have been accidental, as my family had to move from Boston to Texas to California in a span of a few years, throwing off any further plans I had of making lasting friendships while living in one place. But other discoveries were entirely my own doing, urged on by past experiences.

Many of these self-discoveries would not have been possible if my mother had not provided me with the self-confidence to push forward. It was my conscious decision to leave home and go to university on the other side of the country, discovering just how the school is overrated. And it was my choice again to repeatedly move across the world in search of work and further studies, first back to Japan, then Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and back to Japan again. As I finish my doctoral studies in Japan, there is always a part of me that will continue to dream of further ways to explore other parts of the world.

And mother’s words that I can achieve anything in any field allowed me to not stick to one industry and develop a career exclusive to that one, but to learn about so many different kinds of jobs with different corporate cultures and needed skills. That experience with a variety of jobs provided me with a different way of thinking about what a career entails (i.e. a meaningful career comes from diversity rather than status within a single hierarchy) and provides me with incentives to spend my future career also exploring other types of jobs that I have not yet tried.

As 2021 draws to a close, it is a time to be particularly appreciative of the reassurances. COVID-19 has upended so many careers and travel plans. Many people who spent their whole lives doing one thing only and well have seen their way of life devastated. But those who are not afraid of stepping into something completely new and different would have coped much better. The pandemic has shown us life has no constants, something that I already learned from a young age through sudden moves from Japan to America and then within America. I have only my mother to thank for helping me to cope with those changes.