(Note: In the audio segment above, I have offered this essay and included my own comments in several places. The essay below, is Suzuki’s essay without commentary.)
Life was wretched in Japan right after the end of World War II. The winters in Matsumoto are severe, and there are days when the temperature falls to 13 or 18 degrees below zero centigrade. On one of those days my sister returned from an errand, and, as she shook off the snow, she said, “In all this cold, there is a wounded soldier standing on the bridge down by Hon-machi, begging. He is standing there shivering in this driving snow, and nobody is putting any money in the box at his feet… I wanted to invite him in to sit in our kotatsu in our warm room and give him some tea.”
I immediately replied, “You merely wanted to?”
She answered yes, and suddenly ran out into the street. I made the room warmer, stirred up the fire in the kotatsu, got out some cookies somebody had sent us as a gift, and waited. About thirty minutes later my sister came back with the white-clad, wounded soldier. “This lady insisted…” he began to explain.
“You are very welcome; do come in." Koji and I urged him into the kotatsu with us, and we sat and talked about all sorts of things. Finally he asked me for the second time, “Why are you so kind to me?”
“My sister happened to see you,” I replied, “and insisted on inviting you in.”
“It’s the first time anyone has… and today was so cold and miserable,” he said.
He told us about his experience in the war, and how he was going from place to place collecting money for the wounded soldiers, and we talked and talked for three hours, until he got warm again. He then got up, saying he had to go to Nagano. At the front door, in spite of his protestations that I already had been far too kind, I put some money in his box, saying jokingly that it was just compensation for causing him to lose a half day’s business, and anyway it was not his own personal box and so he had no right to refuse.
Afterward, my sister said to me, “You taught me an excellent lesson.” Indeed, it was our first exercise in “If you want to do something, do it.”
Plenty of people often think, “I’d like to do this, or that.” We all have the ability to think that. But it usually ends there, and people who put their thoughts into practice are very few indeed. I realized I was one of those people who just think of doing things, and made a resolution:
“There is no merit in just thinking about doing something. The result is exactly the same as not thinking about it. It is only doing the thing that counts. I shall acquire the habit of doing what I have in mind to do.”
Why is it that so many people think of doing things and do not do them? Why do they not have the power to put into practice the things they think of doing? If one just thinks about it, the chance slips by. From the time they are children, people are ordered about by their parents to do this, to do that. They develop resistance, and reluctantly do as they are told, or avoid doing it if possible. The resistance habit becomes subconscious, until they are unable to perform immediately even those things they think of doing themselves. They may think something is a good thing to do, but they have gotten so that they are unable to do it simply and naturally. People lose a great deal this way.
”We should have done it. It was such a good chance, but we let it slip by.” Because they are incapable of putting thoughts into action straight away time after time, people’s destiny never develops. They close the stable door after the horse is gone. Chances come to everyone. Yes, chances come; but we don’t grasp them. By not claiming them we renounce them.
“I should write a letter”—“I should reply to a letter.” If you think so, write immediately. You are not doing anything at the time but just think you will wait and do it later. Even small tasks should not be neglected, but completed right away. It is very important to be able to do this. People who get a lot done manage it because they have the ability to get each necessary thing done right there and then. If you put a task off until some other time, you will never get it done, because “some other time” has its own tasks. Consequently you end up doing nothing and become a person who keeps putting things off. Time doesn’t wait; but most people are so narigachi na no desu (not up to doing things).
The habit of action—this, I think, is the most important thing we must acquire. Life’s success or failure actually depends on this one thing. So what should we do? We should get so that it is second nature to put our thoughts into action. Start now, today. True, it is easier to say than to do, but the more you do it, the more of a habit it will become. It is an indispensable skill. To know something and not to put it into practice is a weak point, but knowledge is mere knowledge, and is not to be confused with ability and skill. Not until knowledge becomes an inseparable part of one is it an ability or skill. There are plenty of people who know a lot about baseball and can criticize a game; however, the spectator lacks the intuitive skills, judgment, and physical coordination of the experienced player.
A fine society is not built by people who just think about what is right to do. What we need are people with the ability of the experienced baseball player, people with various deeply inculcated skills.
Shinichi Suzuki (1898-1998) was the founder of the Suzuki Talent Education method—a method used throughout the world to teach children to play and love music and to cultivate the heart-mind (kokoro) of the individual.
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