Chapter 4: The Conditional “Just by Chance” of “If ~ Then”

Hello everyone. This is Akira.

Imagine this.

“If I work hard and get this qualification, I should be able to escape my current painful workplace and start a new life…”

Have you ever lived with clenched teeth, placing the condition of “if ~ then” on your own future like that?

Or the first message you bravely sent on a matching app.

“If this message resonates with the other person, my lonely nights should end.”

We are always trying to lock our lives inside the prediction of “if ~ (condition), then this will happen (result)” in order to somehow feel secure.

But reality often, as if mocking that prediction or gently betraying it, shows us a completely different landscape.

This is precisely the true nature of the “conditional just-by-chance of ‘if ~ then’ (hypothetical contingency)” that Kuki Shūzō gazed upon.

We Struggle Inside a Predictable “Cage”

The “most simple ‘what a surprise!’ (categorical contingency)” I talked about in the previous chapter was like lightning falling from the sky with no reason.

But what we face in this Chapter 4 is a more earnest, more everyday kind of surprise.

“If I work hard, I will be rewarded”

“If I love, I will be loved.”

We can make efforts for tomorrow precisely because we believe in this rule.

But in reality, this is also a kind of “cage.”

When the conviction of “if ~ then, it should become this” becomes too strong,

when things go outside it, we end up blaming ourselves with “I didn’t try hard enough” or “I have no value,” and scraping away our self-esteem.

Kuki Shūzō stops here.

“I should have fulfilled the conditions, so why did the result go wrong?”

— Behind that was a profound drama of this world that goes beyond mere luck or misfortune.

The Spark When Two Stories Unexpectedly “Bump Into” Each Other

The core of Kuki’s thought is this:

When the “if ~ then” is betrayed, it is not your fault.

It is because “your story” and “the world’s story” came from completely different places and just happened to intersect, he says.

Kuki called this “kaikō (unexpected encounter).”

For example, a job change. You had fulfilled all the “conditions for acceptance.”

But on the company’s side, there was a separate causal flow of “the management policy suddenly changed that day.”

This “two independent flows unexpectedly bumped into each other.”

Sparks fly there, and your prediction collapses.

Kuki re-captured this not as a cold “failure,” but as a beautiful “contingency.” Don’t you think this is an extremely redemptive perspective?

It didn’t go well because the stories “intersected” — not because your existence or effort was denied.

Failure as a “Diploma of Freedom”

If life always proceeded according to the calculation of “if ~ then, it will definitely become this,” we would be no different from mere “cogs in a machine.”

Because there was the despair of “I failed my first choice,” I arrived at a place where I met a lifelong best friend.
Because the expectation of “if” was betrayed, I noticed a “different talent” I myself hadn’t realized.

The moment of “I fulfilled the conditions, yet it was different.”

That is the moment you stepped off the track of predetermined harmony and gained the “freedom” to begin creating your own new life with your own hands.

Kuki thought that precisely within this contingency lies the opportunity for the human inner world to deepen richly.

Even Regret Becomes Light That Makes Your Soul Shine

The mysterious thing about this contingency is that it is “easy to look back on later.” The fact that you regret “If only at that time I had chosen the other path…” is proof that you wished to “live better” and seriously believed in the world of “if.”

But everyone, Kuki gently teaches us.

Please try looking even at that regret as “On that day, in that place, my story and the world’s story strongly sparked against each other.”

Precisely because the expectation of “if ~ then” was betrayed, the “one-and-only story” that is you now has been woven. It is by no means a miss or a failure. It is proof that you were released from a boring future that had been scheduled.

Please look back a little on your day today.

The moment when a choice you thought of with “if ~ then” turned into an unexpected result. Instead of ending that moment with “It was a pity,” I want you to gently say to yourself, “Here my story became new.”

Just that should make life begin to shine more lightly, and yet with deep radiance.

Did the world of the “if ~ then” of hypothetical contingency come across in this chapter?

In the next chapter, we will enter the more dramatic scene of “only A or B” —

disjunctive contingency.

Please look forward to how contingency shines in the major decision scenes of life.

Akira

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