The Weight of Assumptions

We make judgments on people based on their looks or social standing even before getting to know them properly. People think of a simple farmer as someone who is uneducated. A handicapped person is considered weak. An overweight boy in a school gym is considered feeble before he even touches a weight. David Masumoto happens to find out about his long-lost aunt Shizuko, who had been in an asylum for 70 years just after she had gotten her disability checked. But what Masumoto finds is not the weak, disabled person everyone has been thinking of. She thrived in her life by refusing to conform to the expectations that society had of her. I watched myself, in my own life, follow this same principle as Shizuko. It all started when I was in middle school. I was the overweight teen who was assumed to be weak and incapable of performing well in anything physical. Upon starting wrestling, a sport where the minimum expectation is being extremely physically gifted, I took advantage of this misjudgment and used it to motivate myself. I worked hard until I made it impossible for people to label me as weak. Along with her, I learned that people’s first impressions are often false and that perseverance is the only way to prove them wrong.

Shizuko realizes the fact that she was not the weak and inept person that people believed her to be, but she managed to make it in life by demonstrating that these people judged her incorrectly. As the famous saying goes, “Never judge a book by its cover.” I’ve done something similar to this in my life as well. Back in middle school, I was bullied and people believed me to be sort of a “fat loser” who could never achieve anything. I went on to wrestle at the collegiate and the national level; I proved them wrong.

Shizuko’s case is an illustration of the fact that a single story can never provide the complete truth. The disabled Japanese American lived in a country that did not trust people with her appearance and suffered from a double identity, which was turned against her by society. Masumoto asks, “Was I part of a meek and quiet people?” (71). The question indicates that the appearance of Masumoto’s family made them look harmless enough for the government to control them. Shizuko’s illness made it easier for that very same system to exclude her from society. Even the smallest details of everyday life illustrate that point; for instance, other Japanese immigrants were called “inaka, or country folks” (Masumoto 33), which meant that even before the personality of Masumoto’s family was considered in a separate way, they were regarded as other people. The case of Shizuko proves the notion that intersectionality is more than just an academic idea.

Misjudgment always carries a heavy toll that must be paid; thus, both Shizuko and I have endured significant hardships before reality emerged. Shizuko paid the toll of being separated from her family for seventy years, the pain so acute that even her reunion with her family is expressed in small fragments of speech like, “Mama… Mama…. Mama” (Masumoto 65). Shizuko’s family referred to the silence surrounding her as protection, while the book called it “silent suffering” (53), indicating that silence is a source of pain. As for myself, my toll was less bitter but still bitter. Being branded as a “fat kid” in middle school meant I was alone long before it became a source of inspiration, and no amount of accomplishments thereafter was able to erase that period in my life when nobody really cared about me. Judging people based off first impressions does more than just misrepresent them. We take something from them: their time, their relationships, and sometimes their peace of mind.

After watching Shizuko’s life, I understood that the obligation is greater than merely proving others wrong. The same applies to my judgment of other people now. According to Masumoto, the message of his memoir is “to bring the light of the ‘forgotten and invisible,’ ‘not as a formal portrait, but the reimagined snapshots of the everyday and commonplace’” (135), focusing on people whom nobody else pays attention to. Masumoto’s calling emerged from the understanding that his own family had neglected Shizuko for many years, showing that even the closest ones can overlook the people they love. His desire to actually take a closer look uncovered Shizuko’s true story after so long. Therefore, now I am trying to do the same thing when it comes to deciding what my new teammate is capable of doing, even stopping for a moment before making a conclusion about someone’s abilities. For example, a new teammate’s reserved nature seems like weakness at first thought, but over time I noticed that giving people room to prove themselves matters more than trusting my own first intuition of them.

The life of Shizuko, and mine too, demonstrate that society needs to rethink how it perceives weakness. Weakness is a state of mind; for some people weakness is temporary if they are willing to put in the work to persevere through it. This is why I truly believe in the importance of doing something difficult in your life, going outside your comfort zone. Whether it may be moving into a new city, a new job, wrestling, or Shizuko’s struggles, the lesson of perseverance is timelessly effective. I see the similarity between me and Shizuko in that we have developed an iron will over time. Shizuko’s story shows us that perseverance sets people apart in their quest for equality, this character trait being the only thing separating them from equality. Masumoto lived for decades not being aware of the existence of his aunt because her story was never told by society.