"After all, no matter how much you wish to, you can't live off ideals!"
-Kunikida, Doppo. Meat and Potatoes, 1901.
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Just what is an "ideal"?
There are countless answers to that question. Based on pretext; based on ideology, there are numerous origins to defining that word.
But if you ask me, the answer is clear: It is a word written on the cover of my notebook.
My notebook is omnipotent.
It guides me as a principle, as a master, as a prophet. At times, it becomes a weapon and also a key.
Ideal.
In that notebook, everything about me is written out. The notebook that I bring with me everywhere I go holds all of my future.
From my menu for tonight's dinner to my plans to move houses five years later.
From tomorrow's business affairs to the cheapest radish in the area.
Schedules, plans, objectives and guides. I write everything in it and I carry it around to implement them.
In a way that would exaggerate – those "ideals" written out are my prophets. My ideals lies in those prophecies.
Everything would be alright if I just follow it.
As long as I obey the notebook, I can control the future.
Controlling the future.
What a wonderful phrase.
But –
No matter how wonderful that realization is, if you can't see the bigger picture down the road, that brilliance is the same as an imitation; idealism is the same as nonsense.
Therefore, if you open the first page of this notebook, the knowledge to the shortcut to idealism is written there.
"Do the things you should do."
My name is Kunikida Doppo.
As an idealist of truths, I am an advocate of chasing after ideals.
Me who wishes for the implementation of ideals, along with a certain new employee, who since birth had jumbled them out of order, surely this is some savage circumstance going on.
