I met a 90-year-old blind lady, Ms. Kazuko Tanaka. She is living proof that we can be happy and enjoy our life no matter our age or circumstance.
In this blog post, I share important things to be happy that I learned from her.
When I got into her room, she was waiting for me, sitting at the entrance with a lovely smile.
Her room was so clean and I didn’t find any dust on the floor. Later, I found out that she cleans her room every day.
Ms. Tanaka’s background
She grew up in Hokkaido, a northern island in Japan. She moved to Tokyo about 20 years ago to stay near her son. Her grandparents came to Hokkaido as a pioneer in 1907 from Tokushima Prefecture in Shikoku. Her grandmother carried her father, a 2-year-old boy then, to Hokkaido. She was born in 1932 in Hokkaido.
She was living a happy life with her family when she lost her eyesight completely at the age of 48. The cause of the loss was unknown.
“My husband and kids would have a hard time (with a blind wife/mother). I cried in a futon (blanket). I wanted to die, but I didn’t know how to die. It was completely dark and I couldn't even go outside.”
“I remembered someone said how to commit suicide by inhaling gas in a radio program several years before I lost my eyesight. I regretted that I didn’t pay much attention to what the person said. If I had known how to die at the time, I would have already died.”
“I couldn’t prepare meals, couldn’t do laundry any more, either. I didn’t want to give trouble to my family.”
But she managed to transform her mindset and that completely changed the trajectory of her life – I will share how she overcame her adversity in the later part of the series. In this blog, I share the first step for her happiness.
Now she says “I have a lot of friends. I join a lot of events. I enjoy my life.” “I am healthy, and I am not taking any medication.”
Happiness Secret-- Take responsibility
She said,
“For the loss of my eyesight, it’s all my fault. It happened because of myself, and it is not because of anyone else. I didn’t take care of myself. I worked too hard.”
This is the first secret of our happiness – taking 100% responsibility for what happened.
You might have felt a nasty feeling when you blame someone. If you keep blaming someone or something, you don’t have control of your life. You don’t have anything to learn from the experience.
“Taking full responsibility for one’s circumstances (physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually) is the foundation of true personal and relational transformation.” a quote from “The 15 commitments of conscious leadership” by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Warner Klemp.
But in reality we cannot be happy all the time.
“I have been positive since I was a child. But I sometimes fall into negative thoughts and I cannot sleep. When it happens, I notice it, and I switch my mind by myself,” Tanaka said.
Many people fall into this trap, myself included.
When we are unhappy, we don’t even notice we are falling into negative thoughts. They are just thoughts -- nothing has happened.
Nobody can control our thoughts except us. This is where we have to train ourselves..
I will share how she overcame her despair after the loss of eyesight in the next blog post.
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