喜怒哀楽

Having a baby is being a student of human emotions. Every day I live in my son’s sea of feelings ranging from anger to absolute joy and excitement. It never ceases to amaze me how he can angrily bite on my finger one second, and hug me like a koala bear the next, not letting me go. He sees a dog outside the window and becomes so excited, jumping around saying wan wan (doggy in Japanese – Japanese dogs apparently sounds like that’s, not woof woof but wan wan), then he sees my mobile phone and wants to take it from the table, and when I put it out of reach for him he shows me the most distressed face I have ever seen. We prepare lunch and in the middle of eating his natto and rice with the most focused expression on his face, he suddenly jumps up in his chair, pointing at the utility pole outside. It takes me a while to see that there is a crow sitting there. While speaking in a very animated way, pointing at the bird, he seems like he is the happiest person in the world.

When I told my wife about our day, my wife said 喜怒哀楽, kidoairaku, where the Chinese characters, kanji, stand for joy, anger, grief and pleasure. The meaning is, as I understand it, the general concept of human emotions, and I found it very interesting that those four emotions were singled out. As I remember from school, the basic emotions are more than four, and if I would pick four emotions I would definitely include fear among them. It makes me wonder if there is a deeper story behind these four emotions, saying something about the Japanese culture and values from long ago.

Starting to think that way, it becomes almost too easy for me to project my image of the samurai onto this expression. Fear would be a definite no no for a samurai I believe, and together with jealousy and shame and regret and tenderness best to be avoided; feelings that I far too often experience (well maybe tenderness can never be experienced too often) making me not the last samurai but the least. When focusing on joy, anger, grief and pleasure instead, I can see they are a beautiful set of emotions that very beautifully captures our son. I love experiencing his happiness and temper tantrums, and time and again I have told my wife that I am amazed at how little fear our son seems to show. And where there is any, it is far outshined by his curiosity. How I wish that he will stay that way, I say. 喜怒哀楽, my wife says.