My Twentieth Century Evening an Other Small Breakthroughs, The Nobel Lecture

This compact collector’s book is not one of Ishiguro’s works for which he was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature. It’s his story, delivered in long form how he got to the Nobel stage. How a kid grows up amid his influences of family and place. Considered by many to be the most gifted writer of our generation he speaks to future generations of writers. To respect the craft and to keep the craft alive. To say what you must, to explore what you need, to create what needs to be created. To keep the flame burning inside of you, knowing what’s important. Not just for writers but for all of us.

What I loved about this speech/book is how our future is frequently so random as he explains without any of several key intervening events in his early writing days, he never would have been a writer, let alone one of the Greats. Foundational events subtle as a feather tickling his nose became formational and flipped his real writer’s switch on triggering a confluence of events in his mind that needed a home.

His fish out of water beginnings nibbled at his consciousness such as leaving Japan at five to the U.K. and never returning though every year mom told him the next year they would go back “home” to Japan. His mind began remembering and formulating his own unique version of “Japan” the idea in his mind, hanging on to the picture of it as the years passed.

Yet he hadn’t given it any thought as he wrote what was expected among his British peers growing up in England and never leaving. His ethnicity provided one foot mentally in one country, the other foot physically in another. After writing a few pieces and getting accepted to a University fellowship, suddenly he changed tacks. His brain wanted to write about the “Japan” that resided in a corner of his brain preparing him for what life would be like when he “returned” even though that world, that “Japan” in his mind no longer existed.

It wasn’t normal nor expected, but he suddenly needed to write about this dichotomy, not what his training and society said to write about that began to bore him. He noticed his past works weren’t exactly similar in topic but found a certain similarity and repetition in them that forced him to make a break from his formula. After his sudden change and interest in Japan he wrote several more novels about it and then turned that spigot off to write about the U.K. He wrote the hyper English novel, “The Remains of the Day” a huge novel and made into an even larger movie. The first of a string of extraordinary novels.

I think most people that enjoy reading, including myself are fascinated why a writer writes. Lord knows it’s not for fame, fortune, or adulation. Just liked to write? Partly. It’s because that they must write. When diverging catalysts starts the fire most writers are compelled and inspired to write and frequently never stop because they have stories that must be told.

In my case, my first book was a complete reaction to psyche overload to compensate for a traumatizing events and I needed to find answers. I researched the illusive mysterious root cause for one of the uprooting event and had to ask myself after a long search for facts, “What is really important in life? A bunch of facts? There’s more to life than finding a medical or analytical answers. I had to stay motivated, I had to find what really was important. Part memoir, part inspirational, part activating enrichment, as well as learning about others’ great courage of survivors inspirational stories, “When Stars Align, Destiny Happens was born, my first book. I felt it was important to write for others that walk alone searching for answers to real-life problems give them a path forward without having to reinvent the wheel. Also share stories I have heard or found along the way how others walked the same hard path you have and how they made it.

Ishiguro’s lecture shows how one’s path becomes clear only when he unburdened himself with following the “expected” path. The correct path, your own path. It reveals itself when least expected by being on the lookout for it by looking within and listening to your intuition. Your unconsciousness will work on it for you once the seed is planted and will provide a spark of insight, a path forward immediately, in a month, a year, or sometime down the road by following your path by learning what’s most important to you. It’s never too late or never too early. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you give up by ignoring your voice. It’s self-defeating and demoralizing when the easy path is taken leaving the real you with hopes and dreams behind.