Daily Lessons from Life 20 February 2010

"I could've been a yakuza: Japan film maker Takeshi Kitano - Sat, Feb 20, 2010 AFP

TOKYO - Japanese actor-director Takeshi Kitano, who brought the yakuza gangster genre to a global public, says he could have made his life in the underworld had it not been for his mother.

The star of 'Violent Cop', 'Sonatine' and 'HANA-BI' made the revelation in a new book, 'Kitano par Kitano' (Kitano by Kitano), written with French journalist Michel Temman and to be released next week.

'If it were not for my mother's strict education, I could easily imagine having become a yakuza myself, because many of my friends in those years ended up becoming yakuza,' he told AFP ahead of the book's launch."

I don't really know who he is but he seems like somebody with the various awards and recognitions won by his work. What attracted me to comment is his attribution that his mother's strict education prevented him from becoming a yakusa.

Lessons for me are:

1. life can take us to unexpected places, places we never could have imagined, with the help of someone dear and who is also wise and firmed!;

2. a creative type like Mr. Kitano really benefited from his friends who became yakuza even though by his own admission none of them made it very far in the hierarchy! When you live and interact with the real people, you get a lot of inspirations if you observed carefully and think deeper and project out! All of these are the ingredients for being creative;

3. while he has someone wise and firm like his mother, he has taken the independent decision to live his life the way his mother would like because he agreed with it and accepted it. So, it is ultimately due to his own decision and his own efforts that he got to where he is today.

So, if we are the leaders that inspired others to greater height, don't be too self-indulgence, but do recognize that the success was due to the person's own efforts. ;-)