Writing a Script So I Don’t Have to Follow It

I have been preparing for my conversation with Naoya Fujiwara on August 22.

The title is:

“The Invisible World and the Future of Japan.”

It is an extremely broad theme.

It could lead us into politics and economics.

It could also take us into consciousness, prayer, trust, and spirituality.

We could discuss the body, human relationships, happiness, and the future of society.

There are countless possible starting points and just as many directions in which the conversation could unfold.

⸻

As the organizer, I intend to take a certain degree of initiative and introduce several perspectives of my own.

What is the invisible world?

What does happiness mean to human beings?

How far does our condition influence the people around us?

And what kind of happiness should Japan seek in the years ahead?

I have been organizing these questions and considering how best to present them to Professor

Fujiwara so that the audience can also follow and engage with the conversation.

⸻

Of course, there is no way to predict exactly what will happen on the day.

I do not know how Professor Fujiwara will respond.

The conversation may move in a completely different direction from the one I imagined.

The audience’s reactions may determine which subjects we explore more deeply.

Questions submitted by participants may also lead us somewhere entirely unexpected.

That, I believe, is what makes a dialogue interesting.

⸻

This will be somewhat different from the training sessions I usually conduct.

In a training session, I can decide in advance what to communicate and in what order.

It is also relatively easy to design the session around what I want participants to take away from it.

A dialogue, however, cannot be created by one person alone.

I have to listen carefully to the other person and decide, in the moment, what to ask next.

Sometimes I may need to abandon a question I had planned.

At other times, an unexpected remark may emerge, and I may choose to follow it and explore it more deeply.

A certain degree of improvisation and spontaneity is essential.

⸻

That does not mean we should arrive without preparation and simply surrender everything to the moment.

Without preparation, a conversation may not expand. It may simply become scattered.

That is why I am now carefully organizing the order of the topics, the questions, the concrete examples, and even the subjects that can be removed if we run out of time.

I am not doing this so that the conversation will follow the script.

I am doing it so that, even when we leave the script behind, we can always find our way back to the central theme.

⸻

It is difficult to listen to the same subject, delivered in the same tone, for two uninterrupted hours.

The audience will naturally become tired.

So we may move from politics and economics to personal happiness.

If the conversation becomes too abstract, I will bring it back to the body or to examples from everyday life.

If the atmosphere remains tense for too long, I may introduce one of the more familiar questions submitted by the participants.

I want to adjust the pace and depth of the discussion while paying attention to the atmosphere in the room.

⸻

Looking back, I have conducted many training sessions and lectures.

Since founding a company called One’s Word, I have had various opportunities to speak in public.

Before that, I worked with English-language education products for universities, which also gave me opportunities to make presentations at academic conferences.

Even so, I do not think I have often had the chance to spend two hours exploring a single theme through a live conversation with another person.

It has been quite some time since I last took part in a dialogue like this.

⸻

“The Invisible World and the Future of Japan.”

It is a subject that genuinely interests me as well.

As I have continued preparing, questions I had never previously considered have begun to emerge one after another.

How will Professor Fujiwara’s words change those questions?

How far will the discussion expand in response to the people gathered in the room?

I cannot decide everything in advance.

That is precisely why I want to prepare as thoroughly as possible.

And when the day arrives, I hope to let go of my attachment to that preparation and enjoy the conversation that emerges in the moment.