Today, I have worked in IT for almost 30 years and run my own company. I also founded an NPO, where children can get their hands on computers and AI.
But as a first-year junior high school student, I could never have imagined that future. I was sure I was a "kid who can't do anything." It started with something my mother said.
When she saw the results of my first test, she looked deeply disappointed and said:
"I never thought you were a capable kid, but I didn't think you were this incapable."
From that day on, it felt as if darkness had spread out in front of me.
The curse of "I never thought you were a capable kid"
What hurt most, I think, was not "this incapable" but the words before it: "I never thought you were a capable kid." She wasn't disappointed because my results were bad. My mother had never thought I was capable in the first place. To me, it sounded as if the test had simply confirmed it.
And so the shackle of "the kid who can't" was locked onto me. After that came "the kid who should never have been born" and "the kid with no future," one chain after another. The one adding them was me. I think that first remark is what made me forge every chain that followed.
Simply existing was painful. Every day I wished it were all a dream. Every day I wished I could just disappear. That is how a 12-year-old was getting through his days.
My mother was not what people call a "toxic parent." But she was someone who simply never praised her children. I think she just tended to see things in a negative light. "You're gloomy." "You can't do what other kids can do." Almost everything she said to me was negative.
Now that I am an adult, I don't believe she meant any harm. But meaning no harm did not make her words any lighter. For a child, a parent's words tell them who they are. If a parent says "you can't," the child becomes exactly that. At least, I did.
How a "kid who can't" thinks
"If you can't do it, just study. Just put in the effort." Today, I can think that way. But back then, I believed there was no point in trying.
To be more precise, I didn't want to meet the version of me who tried hard and still couldn't do it. If I didn't try, I could stay "the kid who can't." It hurt, but it was a hurt I already knew. If I tried and still failed, I would become "the kid who can't, even when he tries." I would be proving, with my own hands, that my mother had been right. Looking back, I think that is what I was afraid of.
And so I saw only what I couldn't do, and I shut the door on my own future, all by myself.
I hesitate to say this lightly, but when I spend time with children who find it hard to go to school, I sometimes wonder whether, like me back then, they have lost hope in their own abilities and their future. I can't know what each child really feels. But from my own experience, I understand all too well how it feels when all you can see is what you can't do, until even trying becomes frightening.
Even after I became "someone who can"
As an adult, I faced the version of me who couldn't, and I became someone who works hard. At 20, I decided that someday I would start a company and test what I could do. When I entered the working world, I thought I would have to work many times harder than other people, so I worked nights and weekends.
Around 25, I suddenly became good at my work. After that, people often spoke of me as someone special, born with talent. But deep down, I always knew that wasn't true. I am just a kid who couldn't, who worked hard and kept at it. What brought me here was not talent, but effort, piled up day after day.
Even when I became good at my job, I still didn't believe in myself. The capable version of me felt like a castle built on sand: if I let up, I would slide back to who I used to be. Driven by that fear, I kept working.
It took a long time after that before I truly believed in myself. Only recently did I suddenly notice that I do. Today, I can believe that if I try, I can do it. That is how long the shackle from my childhood stayed with me.
The words I wanted to hear
Even now, when I remember that moment in my first year of junior high, my heart aches.
What I wanted were words that told me my parent believed I had a future.
Back then, I think this is what I wanted to hear:
"It's okay. You can do it if you try."