by Kim Cadillo
Elizabeth, New Jersey
I figured it was a bad sign, this recurring daydream of setting my work computer on fire. Working claims, you get used to agitation, but the pandemic put everyone over the edge. I could hear it in the voice of every caller—the weight of worries larger than whatever mishap had brought us together. Every week, I’d get a notice of new cases coming my way—the caseloads of co-workers who’d quit.
When my young women’s leader reached out in May 2020, I felt relieved at the idea of catching up. I let her know I was struggling bad. She listened mostly, then gently asked, “Why not try Byakuren?” It had been five years since my last shift.
Back then, at 18, I’d joined my first Byakuren shift, during which another young woman on shift asked me two devastating questions. “How are we on time?” and “Where are we at on the agenda?”
“I don’t know,” I said, to which she replied, “Oh, OK,” and moved on.
Why had that felt like a punch to the gut? In my first semester of college, I felt utterly lost. Compared to my peers, who seemed to know where they were going and how they were getting there, I felt like a hopeless case. Behind her questions, I heard words she hadn’t said, words, in fact, that only I’d been saying to myself: Oh, so you don’t know anything.
Speaking with my young women’s leader now, I recalled all the times I’d been reached out to since, the kind words passed along in a game of telephone to my sister to my mother to me. “I’ll do it,” I said, and felt my life begin to open.
In the pandemic era, doing Byakuren meant, first and foremost, studying. I began reading Ikeda Sensei’s A Youthful Diary, which often brought me to tears. Young, poor, sick, he grappled passionately in postwar Japan with the question I’d been asking myself since the start of the pandemic: What can I do to change the unhappy world we’re living in?
I began to understand for the first time what it means to have one’s mentor in one’s heart. I became consistent with my morning and evening gongyo, chanting for specific things: wisdom, patience, compassion—compassion, especially for the callers I spoke with every workday. I asked myself: If the person calling were my mother, my sister, my father—how would I want them to be treated?
I brought this spirit with me to my second-ever Byakuren shift; when the New Jersey Center opened for a meeting in March of 2021, I was there, greeting everyone with a big smile.
At work, I took to heart this guidance from second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda, handed down in Discussions on Youth, a published dialogue between Sensei and high schoolers:
President Toda said that the most important thing is to first become indispensable wherever you are. Instead of moaning that a job differs from what you’d like to be doing, he said, become a first-class individual at the job. This will open the path leading to your next phase in life during which you should continue doing your best. (p. 77)
While doing my absolute best right where I was, I began applying for other jobs. Every application, however, was denied. In May, I caught a glimmer of hope when my company announced they’d be offering promotions based on skill as opposed to seniority. I thought: I’ve got skills—Byakuren skills. Four times I applied and four times was rejected. Still, I didn’t stop fighting with a smile. One day, preparing a study presentation for a discussion meeting, I came across this passage from Nichiren’s writings: “There is nowhere throughout the world of the ten directions that the sound of our voices chanting [Nam-myoho-renge-kyo] does not reach. Our voices may be small, but when we intone the powerful sound of daimoku, there is no place in the entire major world system that they do not penetrate” (Gosho zenshu, new edition, p. 1121 [Gosho zenshu, p. 808]).
It struck me then that I was lacking in conviction. From that point on, each time I sat in front of the Gohonzon, I determined that I’d get the job I wanted, no matter what. It took a year, but in May 2023, I was promoted to my current position as an insurance fraud investigator, which came with a raise, a work-from-home schedule and a company car. The youngest in my department, I was also the only one with zero background in the field—unless you count hours spent binging true crime podcasts. Naturally, imposter syndrome surfaces now and again, but I remember right away that I have the Gohonzon, Sensei and Byakuren training. I give my all to completing every task swiftly with a smile.
In January, I was appointed Metro Jersey Region young women’s leader. To open the center on Sundays, the Byakuren members arrive early, which means early morning pick-ups. Catching up with them while the sun breaks over the hills is one of my greatest joys.
A few months back, I visited a young woman going through a struggle much like my own. She was applying for a promotion but hadn’t heard back. Her dream was to do something in the tech field, but it felt out of reach. I told her: “You can do it! Chant! You’re making all these causes, there’s no way you’ll lose!”
Thinking about our conversation on the drive home, I found my own advice stung a bit. I’d gotten my promotion and was super appreciative, but was it my dream job? No. Did I have one? I did.
I was 8 when we moved from Peru to New Jersey—my mother, my sister and me. It was by public television that I discovered not only what but who I wanted to become: Law and Order’s Olivia Benson. Cool-headed, just, compassionate—I wanted to be like that. But as much as Olivia the detective captured my heart, it was the lawyers of the show who inspired my dreams. Everyone knew that I intended to become a lawyer. When had I forgotten that fact? When you’re chanting, when you’re fighting for kosen-rufu, you have the life condition to take immediate action on these kinds of realizations. As soon as I got home, I told my mom that I was signing up for my Law School Admission Tests. “You can do it!” she shouted. And I knew that I would. In her voice I heard so many others—my sisters in faith, my mentor and, surprisingly, me—my true voice, the one that had been calling all along, just waiting for me to answer.
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