A picture in the wallet -Afternoon on the Islands of Langerhans-　Haruki Murakami

Recently, while having a drink and chatting with an old friend whom I hadn't seen in a long time, he suddenly showed me a photo of a young girl from his wallet. It turned out to be a picture of his new girlfriend, who was quite cute. By the way, he is the same age as me and still single. "What do you think, she's young, isn't she?" he said. "Yeah, she's young," I replied. "Haha, she's 28, she's 28!" he emphasized happily. Although I'm happy that he seems to be living a happy life, it's amazing to carry around a photo of a lover who is half his age in his wallet. It looks like he's having fun. However, such people are really special cases, and if everyone was like that, I would go crazy.

By the time people like me reach a certain age, most of them carry around photos of their children in their wallets and show them to me when we meet again after a long time. The older children are already in their third year of elementary school. "Here, this is my child, he/she is this old," he said happily. When I combine these two very different examples, I realize that I'm also getting older. Single people live their lives differently from married people, and as we get older, we become middle-aged men.

If, like me, you don't work for a company and don't have children, you gradually lose your normal sense of age. In some ways, you become more childish, while in other ways, you become strangely mature. So when I meet old friends from time to time, various realizations come bubbling up again. Anyway, there is no one's photo in my wallet. I don't have children, and it would be complicated if I put a photo of a young girl in my wallet. On the other hand, I feel like it would be a bit strange to put a photo of my wife in there. I can't say, "This is my wife, she's 30-something." It's not that big of a deal, but it's a bit of a problem.