Haruki Murakami

"Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting."

Haruki Murakami
Japanese Novelist
1949 -

Commentary

We often spend much of our lives planning our lives — either by writing down goals or day dreaming about what life would be like when we are successful.  We day dream about how our life will be when we have a best-selling novel or a movie studio buys our novel to turn it into a movie.  Yet, as the popular saying goes:  life is what happens when you are planning other things.  Maybe it is the unexpected birth of a child.  Or falling in love and getting married.  Or a car accident that leaves you paralyzed.  

I have spent many of my days dreaming about being able to write full time.  And while it has never happened, I have spent over 40 years writing.  And yet, I am happy with my life.  I don't need to write full time.  An hour or two a day is enough.

As a teenager I dreamed of being a preacher, yet it has been years since I stepped inside a church.  But I have spent much of my life preaching to those who would listen.  Not, of course, in the way I imagined or my parents imagined.  What we seek does not always come in the way we imagine it would.

I do believe we receive that which we seek, but it often does not appear like we wish.  It takes on its own life, its own dimension.

What are you seeking?  What are your daydreams?  Remember life happens now, not sometime in the future.  Are you living in the present or are you living in your dreams?

Creative Practice

Spend today focused on today.  Tomorrow will come in its own time.

Biography

Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan after World War II.  His father was the son of a Buddhist priest and his mother the daughter of a merchant.  Both of his parents taught Japanese literature.  Murakami was influenced by Western music and literature, including Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan and Jack Kerouac.  He studied drama at Waseda University.  His first job was in a record store.  He ran a coffee house and jazz bar with his wife.

Murakami did not start writing fiction until he was 29.  He was inspired to write a novel while watching a baseball game.  The novel won first prize in a literary contest.  The novel, Hear the Wind Sing was published in 1979.  He was 30.  He has published 12 novels and 3 collections of short stories since that first novel.