Barakamon (Episode 3 Highlight)

When I was in high school, I remembered my choice of sport was to join a swim team. My reasoning for that is because I wanted a sport where you competed with yourself and only yourself. While there are swim meets, I never placed emphasis on outdoing my teammates, only to better myself. I always viewed sports as a self-betterment activity and never quite adopted that competitive mentality that many others seem to have.

Once in a while, I find an episode of a show that really speaks to me, and today that show is the anime Barakamon. The show is about a calligrapher named Handa who moves to a rural island to find inspiration for his work. Along the way, he makes new friends which provide him with new inspiration on how to separate his calligraphy from the generic textbook style he is known for. The episode I want to highlight in particular is episode 3, an episode about perceived failures. To give you a short synopsis, Handa is frustrated at finishing 2nd place in a competition losing in which he lost to an 18-year-old. However, he is encouraged to cheer up and invited by the villagers to go catch mochi. Although or MC wasn’t able to catch any, an elderly lady told him some encouraging words about how the experience was not about winning or losing but sharing the wealth. The elderly lady took some of the mochi she caught and made soup to share with everyone. He reflects on this lesson and changes his mind set on coming in 2nd place. Instead, he chooses to enjoy his efforts even if the outcome was not what he hoped for in the end.

Failure is something we can all relate to and seeing Handa get beaten down by such an event feels like a moment I could relate to on many levels. We can often become downtrodden and quantify our achievements against other people. This often leads us to forget to look back and remember how far we have come already. I was reminded today to enjoy life as we go. Comparison is the thief of joy and I hope to slowly move away from looking at others and focus on my own happiness in life.