One morning, I wandered out for a walk by myself.
I decided to look for signs of spring beyond the cherry blossoms.
I crouched down until my face was almost touching the ground.
I stretched up toward the sky.
I took photos of flowers that caught my eye and searched for their names.
And I realized something.
Cherry blossoms aren’t the only flowers that announce spring.
Small flowers I had never noticed before—
flowers so modest that I didn’t even know their names—
were blooming everywhere.
Spring had been all around me all along.
Later, I stopped by the local library.
As I sat reading a book I had borrowed the day before, I found myself thinking about who I had been before picking it up.
I wanted to write, but I couldn’t.
Whenever I sat down to keep a journal, the words wouldn’t come.
Lately, that had been making me uneasy.
I wanted to be able to express my thoughts, my feelings, and the beauty I saw around me through words that were truly my own.
I wanted a richer vocabulary.
I wanted to use language more freely.
And realizing that surprised me a little.
But it also made me happy.
I was never good at reading.
Language arts classes were never my favorite either.
Yet here I was, feeling frustrated because I couldn’t find the right words for the things I loved.
And it was that frustration that made me realize something:
I want to learn language.
Not because I have to.
Because I want to.
When I was in high school, I used to think,
“I hate Japanese class.”
I had dismissed it without much thought.
But yesterday, while reading a magazine column, I came across a line by Yoko Uchida that stayed with me.
She wrote:
“I feel that we study language in order to express, in our own words, the things we find beautiful.”
The moment I read that sentence, something clicked.
Ah.
This is the kind of language study I want now.
And for the first time, I felt I understood why it mattered.
Not because it was a school subject.
But because it was something I genuinely needed.
Something I genuinely wanted.
These days, I spend a lot of time thinking about the path ahead of me.
Sometimes it feels as if I am reclaiming a part of life I rushed past when I was younger.
And strangely, that thought makes me happy.
It makes me feel that I am truly living my own life.
Maybe all this uncertainty—
all this searching and wondering—
is my version of youth.
And through everything I experienced today, one thought stayed with me more than any other.
I already have so much.
The desire to write.
The wish to find more words.
The delight of discovering spring.
All of it is already here.
Just as spring is made not only of the famous cherry blossoms, but also of countless small flowers whose names we may never know.
Perhaps there are already many things quietly alive within me, too.
Things I haven’t fully noticed yet.
And realizing that filled my heart with a gentle sense of peace.
As if something inside me were softly saying,
“Yes.
This is enough.
You’re already on your way.”