First Love is a sad story, with an unsatisfying happy ending. Over the past few weeks, I have slowly rationalized the sadness—why did I feel so sad?—by linking two disappointments together. One disappointment is about unfulfilled love, and the other, which is our focus today, is unfulfilled human potential.
While watching the series in the first week of December, I felt sad quite early, well before I understood how First Love was about unfulfilled love (ignore the title and the song it refers to, as both foretell the story ahead of its narrative arch by too much). I knew the cause of my sadness quickly: both lovers, after growing up dreaming of achieving something great, ended up becoming a building security personnel and a cab driver. They became failures.
Both jobs are unglamorous. The two would not rank highly in things most young men and women would like to do during their mid-life years in any economy.
In the series, there is a subplot where one cab driver laments about the direction of his life. In telling the story of adult Yae Noguchi somewhere in the middle of the series, we are told that she has fallen on hard time: unable to finish university due to an accident, married early, divorced and then forced to give up her son due to relative poverty.
As the series progresses and jumping around the timelines, the sadness intensifies, because… well spoiler if you have not watched me… both of them worked hard to get into a good school. In some ways, those are underemployment, a reality for many.
p/s — happy new year. Speaking of potential, I have further thoughts on output gap and BNM rate hikes. Maybe I will post them just before Thursday, the rate decision day.