The ultimate secret and truth

Wheel of Life (2008) by Chieko Tagami

I’d like to talk a little about the idea behind my recent work “Wheel of Life”.

As I wrote in my blog, J.K. Rowling said in her commencement address at Harvard as follows:

“life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.”

Then what constitutes life?　I would answer that probably life is about nothing else but love and growth.　Everything we experience – joy, agony, happiness and sorrow… they are there for you to grow.　To what end?　It depends on why you chose to be born and for what purpose, but in the end, everybody has to learn unconditional love.　I firmly believe that it is the ultimate secret and truth.　We are all born to love ourselves, our family, our friends, someone we know or do not know unconditionally… wishing and contributing to their (and our own) happiness and growth not only by thought but also with action.　I just learned beautiful words.　“True love is to support someone to be his (her) true self.”　I am incredibly fortunate that I have received such love from many people in different places.　It is my turn to give such love to someone – maybe starting with my son.

And I do not believe in death. Yes, our physical bodies will someday cease to function and everyone has to die. But “life” never ends. It was there before and will be there after what we now know as “life”. Also, lives are connected with each other and no life is isolated. Every single person received love, has been taken care of by someone and nourished by someone. I would not question how much love we received. If nobody took care of you (at least when you are a baby!), you would not exist now. Such action of caring and taking responsibility for someone is called love. And we cannot survive without food which someone else produced, and we all maintain our lives through sacrifice of many other lives.

Such ideas are reflected in this work Wheel of Life. The flower is abstract form of chrysanthemum in traditional Japanese way, and their significance is life. Every chrysanthemum representing life is connected with each other and goes on forever from the past to the future in the circle of life.