The Happiness of Living Unknown

Living, studying, and teaching have provided me with many experiences that led me to think about the components of life itself. During this time, writing tanka poems has become an important part of my life, just like keeping a diary. Tanka is a very short form of poetry that expresses feelings and emotions. Without writing tanka poems, I probably could not have survived in the world of academia. Life is indeed full of hardships, so that in some environments, even survival itself is a challenge. The truth is, “living well” is the hardest assignment for all of us enrolled in the school called “Life.” I think of “memento mori:” remembering that I must die someday. Both tasks (that is, to live well and to die well) motivate me to write tanka: to continue my journey in life of experiences and moments of connection that I will carry with me, and share with others, in the form of tanka poems. Most poems in this book are recent ones, thus written from 2021 to 2023.