The Path to Elemental Life Community - Chapter 7 - Life's Trials and the Miracle of a Wife

While working at a local textile factory, I still harbored a dream deep down to become a priest.
If that's not possible, then at the very least, I want to do work that helps people in the field of social welfare.

With that in mind, I continued studying.

However, life doesn't always go as planned.
The path I had been aiming for was closed off in the form of failure.

But life is a strange thing.
When one path is closed, an unexpected encounter may be waiting.

It was at that time that he met the woman who would later become his wife.

I got married when I was 27 years old.
Forty-five years have passed since then.

Looking back now, meeting my wife was the greatest thing...
This might have been the greatest miracle of my life.

Life after marriage is,
From the life of a young man chasing his dreams,
His life changed into that of a man dedicated to protecting his family.

Around that time, I started working for a water treatment company.

It was a sales job.

To be honest, I wasn't very good at navigating interpersonal relationships within the company.
However, when it came to going to clients' sites and solving problems, I was surprisingly able to perform well.

I originally had experience working in separation and purification technology at a pharmaceutical company.
Water treatment technology is essentially the same: "separation and purification."

That experience proved useful, and I was able to achieve results as a technical sales representative very quickly.

His sales performance was among the best in the company.

However, my life is,
I wasn't the type to settle down at one company.

He also took on a position as a part-time advisor for a major local trading company.
I sometimes worked in a semi-independent capacity.

Around that time, I took on a new challenge.

"From an era of material possessions to an era of the heart."

With such ideals in mind,
I joined a franchise for a painting leasing business.

They even managed to get third place in a national contest.
However, reality was harsh.

You can't live on ideals alone.

Ultimately, this project failed.

But at that time,
I met two business leaders who I will never forget in my life.

One of them is the president of a local trading company.
The other person is the chairman of a franchise group.

The chairman was the former president of Kabaya Foods in Okayama.

I once had a meal with them.

I had given my daughter some Kabaya sweets,
The chairman was very pleased.

And he said:

"It's important for you to start by learning the hard work involved in making money."

Originally, a debt of nearly 10 million yen should have remained,
They exempted me from many of those obligations.

At that moment, I thought:

A truly kind person is,
It means a strong person.

And the job of a manager is
Perhaps it's one way to grow as a person.

After that, I went back to working for a company.

His experience was valued,
I was hired as a new business development manager in the Environmental Business Division.

However,
It was by no means an easy environment.

If you don't produce results in three months, you'll lose your position.

It was truly an environment like "sitting on pins and needles."

Nevertheless, I have achieved results.

But at the same time,
"I won't be staying at this company forever."
I had that thought somewhere inside me.

Around this time, I ended up changing companies several times.

Working in a semi-independent manner,
I worked for three different companies over a period of about seven years.

My salary strangely increased every time I changed jobs.

However, behind that,
I had great support from my family.

Moving after getting married,
I've done it more than ten times, including starting my own business and launching new ventures.

Each time, my wife said,
They set up their new life without a single complaint.

When the children were young,
She even worked for us part-time for a few years.

Other than that,
I did not want my wife to work outside the home.
I've managed to get by somehow.

I think I was lucky.

My wife wasn't very good at accounting or administrative work.
However, his kindness as a person was second to none.

My husband and I,
They are probably one of the most harmonious couples in the world.
I secretly think that.

I was baptized into the Catholic Church before I got married.
My wife was also baptized before we got married.

My wife had a unique sensibility.

When I first entered the church,
They said the altar looked like it was bathed in light and sparkling.
I was deeply moved.

Thinking about it now,
My wife may have had a special sensitivity even back then.

Shortly after getting married,
We rented a room near my parents' house and started living there.

My mother is a very good cook.
They also ran a small restaurant.

One day, he gave me two Kobe beef steaks.

However, the dish that was served was
It was a deep-fried steak that looked like it was swimming in oil.

My wife comes from a poor family.
I had never eaten steak before.

It's a story that still makes me laugh when I think about it.

However, now,
My wife is a very good cook.

Everything I make tastes delicious.

When I was young,
He hadn't realized that his wife was a treasure given to him by God.

In fact, I even worried about it at times.

How foolish that was.

Recently,
This goddess-like kindness of my wife,
I've come to feel this especially during difficult times.

Right now, my greatest pleasure is,
It's going for a drive with my wife after work.

My wife loves hot springs,
I'm going on a short trip visiting shrines and hot springs.

Probably an ordinary couple
I'd say it's about ten times that amount.

In such a life,
I'm finally going to Tokyo.

As a business unit manager at a venture company,
We launched a drinking water business using groundwater membrane treatment.

This business grew rapidly.

Six months after the establishment of the business unit
A contract worth one billion yen.

Subsequently, the business grew to have an annual turnover of 5 billion yen.

Eventually, the company was absorbed into a subsidiary of a large corporation.

However, this technology is precisely what
This would later become something I would work on.

Groundwater air conditioning technology

It became the origin of [something].

The drinking water business using groundwater membrane treatment is
The industry as a whole had an annual turnover of around 20 billion yen.

But I thought...

This technology was applied
The market for renewable energy air conditioning is
It's a hundred times that amount.

And now,
I have returned to this business.

Life is,
It may seem like we are taking a roundabout route,
Perhaps in the end, we will return to the path we started on.

It's as if water
Like returning to the sea in a long current.