Through the miracles of science, it has become easier than ever to measure our success in the world, and compare it to the wealth of others. Where once we might have fretted blindly over the potential riches and happiness of our peers, now their successes are easy to tabulate – just a click away, listed and formatted through a whole ecosystem of social media platforms. Never again must you be tormented by the fear that unknown others are beating you at life; now you can know they are, through their carefully pruned instagrams and twitter feeds and facebook pages.
Via the advent of social media, our every statement has become a performance, declaring our wit and wealth and social worth. Thousands of also-rans clamor for the spotlight, hoping to one day know the pleasure of waking up in fear every morning, terrified that your audience will figure you out. Everyone is a showman, and everyone is a fraud. We construct ideals out of quips and personal victories, sweeping all that might irritate the beast behind the show curtain. Even our admissions of weakness or exhaustion carry a hint of salesmanship – after all, vulnerability is relatable.
Odokawa never intended to serve as a weird human antidote to modern malaise; in fact, basically all of his life choices seem to reflect a man with little sense of self-worth, who’d rather drop out of society than contend with its trials. Nonetheless, his taxi cab has become a sanctuary of authentic performance, and over time, a source of meaningful personal bonds. In the back of Odokawa’s taxi, no one is performing for society – his seat is the place between performances, where characters like Taichi or Shun can catch their breath between fabrications. It is not to our followers, but our service workers who we present our most authentic self; and through this shelter of identity, Odokawa has cultivated friends who might just see him through the trials ahead. Let’s return to the remarkable ODDTAXI.