Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami (December 2018)
It took me a few months to understand why I chose to reread this book. There was no problem with its likeability – as I did with all of my rereads, I zipped right through it. I also wrote down plenty of notes from my reading, in fact more so than usual for fiction. But I knew that I rarely choose my December rereading list based solely on fun and I struggled to identify a coherent narrative thread among those ideas I wrote down for later.
It was an unexpected moment of self-reflection that unlocked the key to this puzzle. I, much like the title character, once had a close group of five friends. And although the details are hardly comparable to the plot of this book, we too eventually found ourselves on separate paths and left our group in the past (1). This didn’t seem like a big deal until I looked over a note I took down from this book that I immediately agreed with – at a certain point, people stop believing in the possibilities of a group friendship.
Why was this the case? Again, there was no negative moment among us. We simply continued our lives, an approach that once brought us all together, but now the same strategy took us apart. It was just as we all understood and expected. And yet, here I am now with no belief in the idea of group friendship. I suspect the explanation here is that some aspect of this group breaking up was traumatic (a word I use carefully because I do not want to cheapen it) and my lack of faith is a protective response against reliving the experience again.
Once I viewed this book in the context of a protective response to trauma, I immediately understood the central idea. Unlike with my friend group, the five portrayed in the book did break apart after a traumatic event, and the way each person’s life changed in the aftermath was a protection against further pain. There is some value in such an initial response but as this book shows life living under a shell can hardly move forward. When the right moment comes around, we have to muster up all our courage and expose ourselves once more to the possibility of further loss.
One up: Throughout this book were various ideas about a range of topics. One comment was about the importance of strong eye contact while listening to someone speak (or shaking someone’s hand). This was a decent insight in that someone who does not make good eye contact in these situations might lack certain leadership qualities but I hardly believe this is the most important among the many characteristics required of great leaders.
One down: In another section, a character points out that a business should spare no expense on image. Again, it’s a lot like the prior thought – there is probably a minimum expenditure required but at some point spending on image becomes a way to prop up a shortcoming in how the daily operation is not leading to a desired public perception.
Just saying: Daily routines seem to come up fairly often these days on TOA and this book was no exception. This books notes that a daily routine can often be a very effective way to cling to life, especially for those left in shock by complete rejection. I believe there is more value in a routine than just this survival perspective but I do think this is an important reminder for anyone regrouping after a difficult moment.
Footnotes
1. No rush…
I wrote very indirectly about this in one of the better-received posts in recent TOA history.
