Anthem of the Heart

I watched a Japanese animation film titled 'Anthem of the Heart'.

The main character is a high school girl who lost her voice when she was little, after she heard from her mother and father, who divorced after the latter's infidelity, that she was a chatterbox that became the cause for their divorce. 

She kept thinking that her words hurt people and became unable to speak. 

But ... by help of the the preparation for the performance of a musical and her classmates' support and understanding, she finally became to speak ... as well as sing. 

Words can hurt people.. 

It's right..

We know that people who are ready to ridicule or threaten us are not comfortable to be with, of course. 

On the contrary, we all have a side, which is similar to her ... and a small minority of people, like the girl, always hold themselves back just not to say words that can hurt others. 

I also tended to be reserved like the boy, another main character in the movie who played the piano to her relic. 

He said he lost any interest in people and lost feelings as well .. and said that he did not have anything to talk to people. 

But, within our minds, such thoughts can make us hate people too ... people who do not care hurting others.

But again.. we do not want to hate people.. or avoid people.. 

because that is not what we want. 

Looking back myself...

Seeing others say whatever they like, not as much considering the other person as I do, I would choose to run away from those people, because I didn't want myself to be hurt by them. 

And I rationalised my behaviour and tried to think that people are not as considerate as I am. 

But ... 

at a moment I found, inside me, the one who is struggling with a kind of resentment against people. 

It was as if my mind had been constantly blaming those who were lacking in thoughtfulness, and their ignorance and evilness .. 

In fact, it was myself ... that I was, deep inside, holding a resentment against ... who lost joyfulness and became too cautious a person who no one can easily invite to talks or befriend.. 

It meant I was trying to turn myself into an invisible man ... 

Like a scene in the movie, wherein the girl, in front of the boy, got allowed to tell what she had thought but held back with the fear of hurting him...

although we can hurt others by words.. 

those words do not hurt us, as long as we are trying to truly understand each other. 

In a sense, it is not whether having spoken hurting words or not that matters ... but whether we truly tried to understand the other person...

And one more thing that I want to say is... 

even though other people around me did not seem to try to understand me as much as I did. 

Instead of regarding them as falling short of my expectation and deleting any hope inside myself, 

I should have tried harder to doubt my standard, which I set arbitrarily ... purely for my own sake. 

High expectation always accompanies an equivalent lack of understanding. 

And high expectation always eliminates touching moments and moving events in our lives. 

That's why people holding high expectation tend to have difficulty praising others ... and cannot feel gratitude... 

because high expectation is actually another name of the desire to complain about behaviours of other people. 

Trying to understand is more necessary than trying not to speak hurting words. 

And trying to understand begins from lowering my own high expectation towards other people..