Seven Virtues That Bind Humanity
Who This Article Is For
- Those who recognize that life’s most profound lessons arrive not through grand revelations but through quiet moments—a chair in a Tokyo café, a cooling cup of coffee, a chance to revisit what we thought we had lost
- Anyone carrying unhealed wounds, unspoken words, or unfulfilled gestures of kindness—the weight of what we meant to say but never did, what we intended to do but postponed for safer days
- People who understand that virtues are not philosophical abstractions but lived practices—courage in facing avoided memories, forgiveness in releasing old anger, presence in this moment before the coffee gets cold
Why Read This
- Because Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s novel offers more than a clever premise about time travel—it provides a mirror. The seven virtues embedded in the narrative are not unfamiliar to you if you have lived beyond adolescence. You have known them, practiced them, failed them, and been saved by them
- Because the café’s central rule—return before the coffee cools—is the perfect metaphor for the life we are actually living. Opportunities pass. Coffee cools. Chairs empty. The question is whether we will hesitate or act with kindness before we forget
- Because this article does not merely summarize the novel. It invites you to examine where these virtues appear in your own life, where they are absent, and what happens when we practice them—or fail to—with the people who matter most
Funiculi Funicula. What a name.
Would you walk into a coffee shop called that? I might hesitate—at least until I learned about the chair. The one that lets you travel back and forth in time. There is, of course, a caveat: only until your coffee gets cold.
In a quiet corner of Tokyo sits this café, known less for its coffee and more for a single chair with a secret. Sit in it, you can journey back in time. But before the coffee cools, you must return. In Before We Forget Kindness by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, lives transform—not by changing the past, but by encountering timeless human virtues.
These virtues are not unfamiliar. If you have lived beyond adolescence, I can say confidently—without exception—that you have been touched by them. Often through known and unknown acts of kindness. The word funiculus means a sheath that binds nerve bundles together. The name fits: these virtues bind humanity, regardless of differences.
Can you guess what is missing from this binding?
Read on. It reveals itself.
The Seven Virtues
Kindness
The simplest gesture becomes someone’s lifeline. A word spoken at the right moment. Silence offered when words would wound. We assume tomorrow gives us another chance, forgetting that tomorrow is never guaranteed. I think of patients I saw in Dallas—UTSW pathology rotation, 1987—where a diagnosis delayed by a single day meant options foreclosed forever.
Courage
Not the courage of battlefields. The courage to face memories avoided for years, conversations postponed indefinitely, regrets we carry in silence. True bravery appears in quiet corners—when someone finally says what needed saying, faces what needed facing. The café’s characters discover this. So must we.
Forgiveness
Forgiveness loosens the grip. Of anger. Of silence. Of old wounds we nurse like treasures. It frees both—the forgiver and the forgiven—allowing them to breathe again. This is not about condoning wrongs or forgetting harm. It is about releasing the stranglehold that resentment maintains on our present lives.
However (and I use this word deliberately, knowing its frequency in my own writing), forgiveness requires something many find harder: acceptance that the past cannot be rewritten, only carried differently.
Closure
Unhealed wounds tether us. To pain. To the moment of injury. To the person we were when it happened. The café teaches—and this is crucial—that healing does not always come from answers. Sometimes it comes from the courage to say goodbye to what cannot be recovered.
Love
Love permeates every story. Sometimes hidden. Sometimes unspoken. Sometimes realized only when time has passed and the opportunity lost. It reminds us that love must be lived openly, not stored away for safer days that never arrive.
I am reminded—unexpectedly—of atithi deva bhava. The guest is divine. Love extended without condition, without calculation of return. That principle, ancient in origin, appears in this modern Tokyo café in every gesture of care the characters offer one another.
Acceptance
Perhaps the hardest virtue. The past cannot be rewritten—this is the café’s immutable rule. You cannot change what happened. You can only change how you carry it. What once felt unbearable can soften through acceptance.
This is not resignation. Not defeat. It is the recognition that some things simply are, and fighting their existence only compounds suffering.
Presence
This ties everything together.
The chair’s rule is the metaphor: we only have this moment before the coffee gets cold. Life is here, now, asking us to live fully in this present instant rather than haunting the past or anxiously anticipating futures that may never materialize.
That is why Before We Forget Kindness lingers long after the last page. It is not a novel about time travel. It is a mirror held up to our lives. Coffee cools. Chairs empty. Opportunities pass. The choice is ours—to hesitate or to live with kindness before we forget.
A Personal Reflection
From my own experiences—medical practice, hospitality work, consulting engagements spanning molecular oncology to cloud governance—I’ve noticed something subtle yet important. When we do something for others, we often expect something in return. Gratitude. Recognition. Validation. Even divine acknowledgment.
That is where we err.
True selfless action requires detachment from the thought “I did it.” The moment we cling to that idea, the purity of the act dissolves. I am learning this myself, though I confess the lesson comes slowly to someone trained in achievement-based medical and consulting environments where outcomes define worth.
I think of my octogenarian cousin, Honorable Dr. Harikishen Heda, a cardiologist from Maryland. He has contributed immensely—to society, to community, to countless individuals whose names he likely no longer remembers. Yet he firmly rejects any mention of his name alongside his deeds. According to him, claiming credit diminishes the karma itself.
Is he right?
My Take
Opportunities to serve—people or causes—are rare. When they arise, they are blessings in themselves. What we do selflessly should be placed quietly at the Almighty’s feet, because not everyone is given the chance to do.
The Gita captures this with precision that has survived millennia:
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि
(Bhagavad Gītā 2.47)
You have the right to action alone, never to its fruits.
The Moral
Keep practicing these virtues. Kindness, courage, forgiveness, closure, love, acceptance, and presence. We never know when our chance to act will come again.
Or when our time may simply be up.
