Ruminations on a Quote from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki

Stand by for English. 

"Dalam hidup kita, kadang ada hal yang terlalu rumit di jelaskan dalam Bahasa apa pun," kata Olga. 

Benar sekali, piker Tsukuru sambil menyesap anggur. Jangankan menjelaskan kepada orang lain. Menjelaskan kepada diri sendiri pun tetap terlalu rumit. Seandainya dipaksa menjelaskan, akan muncul kebohongan."

--from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.

This translates to something like this in English: 

"In our lives, sometimes there are things that are too difficult to explain in any language," said Olga. 

So true, thought Tsukuru while sipping his wine. Nevermind explaining them to someone else. They are too hard to explain even to oneself.  And if pressed to explain, what comes out may well be lies. 

Ain't that the truth, as Tsukuru says. There are some things in our lives that are fraught with doubt, or with regret, or with shame, or with mystery. These arise in the heart again and again, and we come up with various interpretations, each seeming roughly suitable at the moment and yet ultimately proving fragile, porous, or downright untrue. 

There are those in the world who are good at fashioning suitable stories, or who are at least perfectly satisfied to do so. In fact, they could not bear the dissatisfaction of doubt and endless rumination. We are all this way, to some extent. All such narratives tend toward self-justification, and toward demonization of the other. There are those who repeat their narrative so often that they begin to recognize the elements of the invention above the actual events that led to the fashioning of the personal narrative. Thereby they acquit themselves and move on. The thing of most critical importance is not the truth--which is an unsettling, unsure, shape-shifting thing at best--but a reliable vehicle for moving forward, leaving the past safely and silently behind. No one succeeds in this completely. But there are those who do a pretty damn good job. And part of this job, necessarily, is putting others who were involved in the troubling events as far away as possible. 

On the other hand, there are those of us who cannot help but see that lies, no matter how convenient and pleasant they may seem, do a certain sort of violence both to oneself and to others. Trouble unexamined is trouble made futile. In examining things closely, we find ourselves less and less absolved from guilt, and we find others less so too, for most human troubles arise from a cooperative effort. One sees one's own shortcomings most clearly, forgives the shortcomings of others most generously. But it is only compassion, mercy, and the willingness to fully understand that can lead to a mature and genuine peace. 

In the novel by Haruki Murakami, the protagonist is deeply troubled, year after year, by a painful event that he cannot understand. He has lost a part of himself to the past and can either surrender the loss to captivity or restore the fullness of his person by taking captivity captive, so to speak. Tsukuru Tazaki, with the help of 'a better angel', is ultimately the sort of person who is pressed on to confrontation and resolution.