Sushi
A man served me sushi on a quiet street in Tokyo last night. Each morning he visits the markets to purchase fresh fish, and each evening he prepares the fish for his customers, practiced hands working a heavy cleaver that looks as old as he does.
After handing me a plate of nigiri, he watched my reaction carefully. There was a moment of tension as I popped the roll into my mouth, and palpable relief when he saw the expression on my face. Somewhat shyly, he broke the silence: “I live for that smile.”
After two hours of raw fish, bawdy jokes, and beer, I asked him how long he had owned his restaurant. “Forty years. I’ll be sixty-seven this March,” he said. I might have surmised as much from his speech. He spoke the Japanese of an older man, slurring consonants and neglecting the finer details of formal conversation. He turned to a friend sitting at the end of the bar and smiled ruefully.
“We’ve gotten old, haven’t we?”
Reflecting on our conversation, I tried to understand what about him moved me so much. He was informal and occasionally crass. His sushi was good, but not the best sushi I’ve ever eaten. And then it occurred to me:
A profound sense of effort animated every motion of that man in the sushi shop. It echoed in every thump of the blade on the cutting plank. It radiated through the creases in his smile.
He tries his best, and the world is carried on the backs of those people who try.