forgiving oneself ; a lesson learned from koe no katachi (2016)

ishida shouta starts the movie by being a bully. he mocks, makes fun of, even tortures nishimiya shouko, his deaf classmate, merely for the fun of it. everyone enjoys this rather cruel antics until their homeroom teacher finds out that shouta is a bully. suddenly, they turn on him, this time it is his turn to be bullied. this bullying continues on until middle school. by the time he becomes a high-schooler, he has changed to be someone who is ashamed of himself, unable to forgive himself for his past behavior; he thinks he doesn't even deserve a friend, he is a loner.

forgiving oneself is a process, a journey, and a hard one for some of us. throughout the entire movie, we can see shouta's relentless effort to redeem himself, by helping another person who is bullied, by asking shouko to be his friend again and this time promising himself to ensure that shouko will never cry again. during this process, we can also see that shouta slowly goes out of his shell. he begins to see other people, he begins to make friends. and not until the end of the movie do we see shouta finally able to truly open up and finally decides to begin to forgive himself properly.

everyone makes mistakes--it is a given, of course, a common sense. nobody is perfect. to some, it's easy to just simply learn from it and move on to another chapter of our life. but to some others, it is not. and i belong to the latter group. it is fair to say that i can relate to shouta's struggle to make amends with his wrongdoings in the past.

but shouta's path to redemption really makes me realize that this path can be a long and hard one. i can see how throughout most of this journey, he's still ashamed of himself, he still wants to isolate himself from the rest of the world, he still thinks that he is less than a person because of his past. but then, the most beautiful thing is that he keeps on doing it. he keeps meeting shouko even though it is clearly uncomfortable for him, since it means he has to face the person whose past hurt he regrets the most head-on. then he ever so slowly opens up to other people in order to patch things up with them, little by little.

shouta's strength to self-redemption really inspires me. it can require you years to actually start fighting and go down this path, it can require you months to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel once you commit to this journey. sometimes you can't see clearly too along the way, your ego wants to see what is best convenient, thus you probably won't have the best of judgment. sometimes you want to walk away and go inside your shell again too, as facing your problems head-on can be really, really uncomfortable.

but shouta reminds me that at the end it's all gonna be worth it. what is better than finally being able to live again, to finally look up again, to finally hope again? nothing can beat that feeling. short escape and instant dopamine booze you get every time you look away from your problems doesn't even compare at all.

koe no katachi (2016) is about a boy who wants to be a whole person again by accepting his harsh past and trying his best to improve his character... and he succeeds.