I don’t know whether they are still there or not, but I often went to work in the ironworks and dockyards in Kawasaki. At the Kawasaki docks, there was a barge that used to move coal around from one place to another.
It would take a person several days to load 120 tons of coal on the barge, but I worked straight through until one o’clock in the morning and finished it in one day. As a Korean, I had to set an example for the Japanese.
I sacrificed myself in the position of a younger brother. I stayed awake all night to comfort them. Furthermore, I shed blood and sweat for them.
Although I had not done much physical work before, I went to construction sites and invested my whole self, so as not to be outdone by workers who had done such work all their working lives. I felt great pleasure when I won some money for doing more work than they did, competing with them, and beating them. I still remember it clearly.
On the weekends and on holidays, I often worked as a laborer. There was a lactic acid tank that workers had to go inside to clean it by flushing out the remaining raw materials. The device inside the tank to do this becomes unusable after a few years of use. So you have to go inside the tank to change it.
You can’t work inside the tank for more than fifteen minutes. I endured that. When it snowed or a typhoon blew, I didn’t go to classes; I went to a laborers' canteen to find work. I felt great at those times.
Some say they have to go to a solemn, quiet place or a place deep in the mountains to cultivate themselves. It’s not true. I don’t believe you can only study in quiet places.
I have studied in factories next to huge machines running on several thousand horsepower. Furthermore, I often did that kind of thing. I prepared myself by doing various kinds of jobs.
If you don’t become a worker among workers, the father of workers, you cannot save workers. You have to become the father of farmers, and as such, you have to love farming. If you go to a fishing village, you have to fish with the fishermen.
I did every conceivable job. I’ve laid floors. Furthermore, I’ve laid bricks. I’ve built chimneys, and I am good at carpentry, too. There is nothing I can’t do. On a salt farm, do you think I wouldn’t be able to carry sacks of salt?
I have even learned how to make charcoal. I know how to drive a post into the ground. I can make anything if I have a saw. There is nothing I haven’t tried. If I go anywhere, take off my suit and put on work clothes, I can help with anything.
I have been everywhere in Japan. When it was difficult, I had digging jobs. I tried my hand at everything. I’ve even worked as an errand boy in a big company building. I’ve been a secretary for a cabinet minister.
Because I speak more quickly than others, if I met somebody I didn’t like, I soon dealt with him or her. I’ve been a writer for famous people. I’ve even done diplomatic work.
I have worked in companies. I’ve written things and sold them. In one construction company, I was the site foreman. If I set my mind to it, there is nothing I cannot do. If I meet somebody who is a good talker, I become a good talker, too. If I meet an academic, I become an academic.
When I was a student, I used to tease the professors, and when I was hungry, I used to go to the professors and ask them to buy me lunch. It’s true. I am not making this up.
You have to tune your spiritual antennae. A life of faith is a life of becoming a discerner, one who can understand the relationships in the universe. So in the life of faith, through experience, you have to develop yourself by evaluating things around you rather than being aided by the spirit world.
I can catch what kind of person someone is just by looking at him or her. I know you just by looking at you. As soon as I look at you, I feel it immediately, “Ah, that person is lacking in this way because his nose is shaped like this, his shoulders are like this, and his ears are like this.” I can understand everything about a person immediately. I trained myself in that kind of thing.
Developing a well-rounded personality
If I were to pick up a pen and record the scenes of my life, the result would become the yeast of a new thought, which would help a flower to bloom within the hearts of the youth of the twenty-first century.
It would be quite splendid. In this regard, it is as if I have been on a stage and have given the grandest performance, unprecedented in history. You should study me.
My teaching method is to persuade you to go, of your own volition, into a melting pot of despair and endure it until you reach the age of thirty. Within the melting pot of despair, you will find something new to help you develop.
You will be able to create a new future if you become a man or a woman who shouts a joyful battle cry, feels renewed determination, and thinks, “What if I had not had those experiences?”
So, however difficult a situation you may be in, you need the inner peace of mind and versatile independence that expresses human beauty. You should become a person of character who can naturally go from the highest to the lowest place. You may go up and come down, but if you are not a person of character, when you go up, you will not stand on God’s side.
Try everything. Experience everything as if you are reading from the first page of an encyclopedia to the last page. And when you can say, “Now there is nothing left for me to do!” the domination of yourself remains.
Your subject-like nature remains. When you can say, “There is no one under heaven who can beat me,” it is time to choose something you want to do and push for it with all your heart for the rest of your life. Then you will surely succeed.
Loving my country’s enemy
When I went to Japan, I opposed the Japanese emperor, not the Japanese people under the control of the emperor. This is certain. When I went to Japan, I loved the Japanese more than anyone else did.
At that time, Japan was a country that didn’t know God. I thought I had to let Japanese people know about the Lord of Creation, their loving Heavenly Father.
If I had any money, I would give all of it to my friends. I thought, “I’ll establish the condition of loving Japan more than anyone else does.” I went to many places. I hugged a huge Japanese cedar and cried.
If I met a hungry friend, even though I may have been hungry myself, I would give him something to eat. If I met a hungry student who was paying his way, I used to embrace him with tears.
During the years under Japanese rule, we were hungry. I used to collect food coupons and say to a student who was paying his way, “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Come to my house.” There, I would say, “Eat! Eat! Eat to your heart’s content.” After about three days, everything was gone.
Because I knew that if I didn’t have the heart to love them as I did my brother, or as I loved my mother, I couldn’t go into the realm of God’s heart, I trained myself to do that even in Japan, transcending my nation. I paid the school fees of some of my friends from the money I earned as a laborer.
Some of my friends stopped going to school because of difficulties they were going through. I also quit school for a few months to care for them like a mother or father and help them graduate.
Sun Myung Moon