I’ve felt a weird sense of kinship with Haruki Murakami for a long time, maybe because he was the first real writer I ever read in Japanese; even though I have a hard time taking his female characters seriously, and I don’t by any means like everything he’s written, still I feel like I can relate to him.

My sister is a runner, so she picked up his recent book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and I borrowed it from her. I came upon this passage near the end:

What I mean is, I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run–simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.
…
No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative, often self-centered nature that still doubts itself–that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I’ve carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I’m not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I’ve carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry.

I relate to this. I think that sometimes in American society we put a lot of emphasis on passion, and in particular, there are so many times I’ve been told you shouldn’t be a writer unless you’re completely desperately passionate about it. But I’m not a person who tends to have desperate passions, and when I do it’s usually better if I don’t listen too hard to them. When I feel that things are true it’s a quiet, instinctual kind of feeling. Okay, this is the suitcase I’m supposed to be carrying. It’s the suitcase that’s mine. That’s all, that’s enough.