Lights Along the Road · Hiroshi Kanda
Chapter 34: Seeing the World With Other Eyes
The Words: Marcel Proust, 1923
In 1923, a year after Marcel Proust's death, the fifth part of his long novel In Search of Lost Time was published under the title The Captive. In one passage, the person telling the story listens to a piece of music by an imagined composer and thinks about what art gives us. In my own words, he says: the only true voyage, the only bath in the fountain of youth, would be not to travel to new landscapes, but to have other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another person, of a hundred others, and to see the hundred worlds that each of them sees. Great artists, he says, let us do just that.
Many people know a shorter form of these words: that the real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. That famous sentence is a free retelling, not what Proust wrote. It is a good thought, but it changes his meaning a little. The short form speaks of our own eyes made new. Proust spoke of borrowing the eyes of other people, and of the many worlds we can enter through their art.
The Life Behind the Words
Marcel Proust was born in 1871 and wrote in French. From childhood his health was delicate, and he suffered from asthma all his life. As a young man he went to many elegant parties and wrote articles and stories, but few people expected great things from him. After his parents died, he turned more and more to one enormous task: a novel about time, memory and the people he had known. He often worked through the night in a room lined with cork to keep out noise.
The novel grew to seven volumes. Its first volume appeared in 1913, and Proust was still correcting the last ones when he died in 1922. The book is famous for one small moment: the taste of a little cake dipped in tea suddenly brings back a whole lost world of childhood. Proust knew that a single sensation can open a door inside us. His words about other eyes come from the same discovery. The world changes when we change the way we look at it.
What the Words Ask of Us
The words ask us to be curious about how other people see. Each person carries a whole world inside: their memories, their fears, the colours they notice and the sounds they love. We cannot enter that world completely, but we can come closer. We do it when we read a novel, listen to music, look at a painting or simply ask a friend to tell us what a day felt like for them. Each time, we come back with a little more of the universe than we had before.
Think of Noor, who has walked the same road to work for fifteen years and no longer sees it. One weekend she takes her small nephew along the same road. He stops at a crack in the wall where moss is growing, at a cat on a windowsill, at the shape of a cloud above the bakery. Noor realises that she has not travelled anywhere new, yet the road has become new. For one morning she has borrowed a child's eyes, and she sees a world she had stopped noticing.
Similar Words From Around the World
Zhuangzi was a thinker who wrote in Chinese more than two thousand years ago. In a famous passage, he tells how he once dreamt he was a butterfly, flying happily here and there. When he woke up, he did not know, in my own words, whether he was a man who had dreamt of being a butterfly, or a butterfly now dreaming that he was a man. The story gently loosens our hold on one fixed way of seeing. Like Proust, Zhuangzi suggests that the world we see is only one of many possible worlds.
In William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, written about 1600, the young prince tells two old friends that the world seems like a prison to him. When they disagree, he answers: "there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". Hamlet speaks these words in a dark mood. Yet they hold a hopeful truth that fits Proust's passage. The way we look at things shapes what we find in them. If our eyes can make a prison, other eyes can also open a door.
Living It Today
These words can help anyone who feels that life has become dull or narrow. A person who cannot travel because of work, money, illness or age has not lost the true voyage. A student, a busy parent and a retired person can all have other eyes, through books, through music, and above all through listening to other people.
Here is something to try this week. Ask someone close to you how they see a place or an event that you both know well: your street, your workplace, a family celebration. Listen without correcting them. Or read a few pages written by someone whose life is very different from yours. Notice what you had never seen before. The greatest journey may begin without a ticket, in the moment we look through another person's eyes.
Chapter 35: Not Too Serious, Not Too Careless
The Words: Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 1923
From 1923 onwards, the writer Akutagawa Ryūnosuke published short sayings, a few lines each, in a magazine. They were later collected under the title Words of a Dwarf. Some of them are witty, some are sharp and some are quietly sad. One of them is a small picture of life itself. In my own words, it says: life is like a box of matches. To treat it with great seriousness is foolish. Not to treat it seriously is dangerous.
The picture works because a match is such an ordinary thing. It is small and cheap, and we use it without thinking. It would be silly to hold a ceremony every time we lit one. Yet a match carelessly dropped can burn down a house. Akutagawa saw that life is like this too. It asks us to hold it lightly and carefully at the same time.
The Life Behind the Words
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke was born in 1892 and wrote in Japanese. He loved books from childhood and read widely in many traditions, old and new. While he was still a university student, he wrote a short story called "The Nose", which was warmly praised by the novelist Natsume Sōseki, whom we met in chapter 24. That praise helped to start his career. In the years that followed, he wrote many short stories, often retelling old tales in a fresh and thoughtful way.
One of his best-known stories, "The Spider's Thread", was written in 1918 for a children's magazine, and it is still read by children today. His stories are clear, carefully built and full of insight into human hearts. A major prize for new writers in Japanese was later named after him. Akutagawa died young, in 1927. His saying about the box of matches shows a mind that saw both the lightness and the weight of life, and tried to keep them in balance.
What the Words Ask of Us
The saying asks us to find a middle way. Some people take everything too seriously. Every small mistake feels like a disaster, every comment from others feels like a judgement, and every choice becomes a heavy burden. Other people take nothing seriously. They let promises slide, ignore risks and treat other people's feelings as unimportant. Akutagawa does not tell us to choose one side. He tells us that both sides have their dangers, and that a wise person holds life with a light but steady hand.
Think of Yusuf, a man in his thirties who is preparing for an important examination at work. For weeks he has studied late every night, and now he cannot sleep and has stopped seeing his friends. One evening a friend invites him for a walk, and he almost refuses. Then he remembers that the examination is important, but it is not his whole life. He goes for the walk, laughs for an hour, and returns to his books with a clearer mind. He has not stopped taking the test seriously. He has simply stopped taking it too seriously.
Similar Words From Around the World
More than two thousand years earlier, the philosopher Aristotle, writing in Greek, taught that a good quality lies in the middle between too much and too little. In my own words: courage, for example, sits between being afraid of everything and rushing into danger without thought. Aristotle's idea gives Akutagawa's picture a firm frame. Seriousness about life is also a good quality only in the right measure. Too much becomes heavy fear, and too little becomes carelessness.
Zhuangzi, a thinker who wrote in Chinese, tells of a huge tree that carpenters called useless, because its wood was twisted and could not be cut into boards. In my own words, Zhuangzi says: why not plant it in a wide, empty field and rest in its shade? Its so-called uselessness keeps it safe from the axe and gives shade to everyone. This echo adds a playful lightness. Not everything in life must be useful or serious. Sometimes the best thing is simply to rest under a tree.
Living It Today
These words can help anyone who feels the weight of life too strongly, or not strongly enough. A young person afraid of failing, a worker carrying many duties and an older person worried about health may all need to loosen their grip a little. Someone who has drifted into carelessness may need the opposite reminder: some things deserve real care, such as health, promises and the people we love. The box of matches is in everyone's hands.
Here is something to try this week. Think of one thing you are treating too seriously, and allow yourself to hold it more lightly, perhaps with a laugh or a short break. Then think of one thing you have been treating too lightly, such as a small promise or a health habit, and give it real care. Balance is not found once and kept forever. It is found again each day, and each day is a good place to start.