No.0150：The Boiling Frog: Break Out of Comfort
May 27,2026
A comfortable place protects you from pain. It gives you little friction and the same sense of safety you had yesterday. But if you soak too long in that warmth, before you know it, you lose the strength to step outside. You run back into nostalgia, fear stepping out of the line of your company or your relationships, and justify the version of yourself that never changes. Meanwhile, the world keeps shifting little by little, demanding that you become different from who you were yesterday. This time, I want to think about “escaping comfort before you are boiled alive.”
Do Not Be Fooled by Nostalgia
One of my favorite films is Cinema Paradiso, a story set in a small rural town in Italy, about a mentor and his pupil. The pupil is content with the small role he has been given in that countryside. The mentor, seeing his ability and wanting him to challenge himself in a wider world of opportunity, tells him to leave that town and never come back. He sends him off with these words:
Do not be fooled by nostalgia. Love what you do.
When things are so painful that I want to run back to the comfort of the past, I often remember those words.
Leaving a World Without Friction
There was a time when I, like that young Italian man, wanted to shut myself inside a narrow world. I was inward-looking then, sick of the human relationships I had dealt with when I was younger. I once told a friend, “I just want to stay shut in forever, watching TV. That way, I can indulge in a mellow, frictionless life.” He replied, “That sounds awful. I’d hate that.” For some reason, his words stayed with me. The person I am now is closer to that friend. Getting involved with people brings all kinds of trouble, and sometimes you get betrayed. But as the Beatles sang in With a Little Help from My Friends, I believe that in the end, people cannot live alone. The peace we receive from other people is irreplaceable. So there is no avoiding human connection. And as we keep stumbling through trial and error, I believe our ability to understand people gradually becomes sharper, and we learn how to deal with them better. I am not exactly someone to be praised even now, but I have become much better than I used to be.
The Fear of Stepping Out of Line
Next comes my past, when I was shut inside a company, or perhaps shut in by it. Today, social norms such as seniority-based promotion and lifetime employment have collapsed. We even hear terms like “resignation agencies” now, and employment seems to have become far more fluid. But when I was young, if you changed jobs repeatedly, you risked being labeled socially unfit. Staying as long as possible was considered the “right answer.” That made things miserable if you did not fit the company. Could changing jobs really solve the problem? Or would the same issue simply repeat elsewhere? Would it damage my resume? On top of that, changing jobs often meant being placed on a lower salary table, like stepping even slightly out of the line at a ramen shop and being forced to join again from the back. Because of those anxieties, I stayed for quite a long time. But no matter how much anxiety you have, a mismatch will never be resolved unless you finally take the leap and get out.
The Human Insight AI Cannot Take Away
Contrary to my old, almost Edo-period sense of work, like the rigid hierarchy of samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants, many young people today seem to choose companies on the assumption that they will eventually change jobs, selecting places where they can build skills in a seller’s market. I can only envy them. Yet although it is not yet so obvious in Japan, in the United States job cuts caused by AI replacing human labor are already beginning. In the medium to long term, perhaps an even harsher struggle for survival awaits us. To prepare for that, I strongly feel the need to keep renewing myself instead of remaining in comfort. What I am especially paying attention to is insight into people. The more AI gains influence, the more valuable the ability to read the subtle circumstances of human beings will become. Routine work is AI’s specialty. That is precisely why the ability to deal with non-routine, exceptional, sudden situations, and to read the human messiness behind them, interests, emotions, lies, evasions, self-preservation, and silence, will become a major source of differentiation.
For example, people often try to protect themselves by playing a role. When some kind of problem occurs, people often behave not as perpetrators but as victims. In reality, however, they often contain both sides. In some cases, even someone who is completely the perpetrator may act like the victim. If you take that at face value, you will misread the situation. You should never trust a smooth talker who flatters the boss completely, then the moment the weather turns bad, makes a 180-degree turn and starts spouting things like, “See? I told you, didn’t I? Nobody ever listens to me!” By asking the right questions repeatedly, observing the other person’s expressions, posture, and atmosphere, and reading the person behind the words, we can evaluate the situation correctly. I see great value in that. Reading the room is only admirable when you can read it and then choose not to. Failing to read it and calling that independence is just unfortunate. If you do not read people, if you avoid friction, and if you continue to remain in comfort, that entire place may eventually be invaded by AI. That is why we cannot avoid ongoing involvement with many different kinds of people.
Do not be fooled by nostalgia.
Jump, before you are boiled alive.