We Are All the Same People

I went for a health checkup. Reception opens at 8 in the morning, but at this hospital, where crowds come if you are even a little late, the start of examinations is greatly delayed. So every year I drop my exam form in the reception box thirty minutes before reception opens, sit in the waiting room, and wait for my name to be called.

There are countless people who, impatient like me, have come early with the same idea. That man might be an executive at a major company; this one is probably a tradesman in the facilities line; he must be a university student; and that stylishly dressed man beside him does design work; she looks like an office worker in general affairs—and so, imagining people’s occupations from their clothes and appearance, I killed the waiting time. “Numbers 1 through 20, please go to the changing room and change into your exam gowns,” a booming voice rang out. Being number 11, I headed for the changing room, glad to have made the first group.

Clad in a drab, oversized, jinbei-like exam gown of a bush-warbler green, I sat on the bench in front of the designated exam room and turned my eyes to the people I’d seen earlier in the waiting room, now sitting on the bench across from me.

Why—so changed from before, they all looked like mere people, with neither occupation nor rank.

In this instructive scene of “you must not judge people by appearances,” I felt a warm, gentle air quite apart from the purpose that had brought us here.