There's something both liberating and unsettling in this confession. We spend so much energy imagining alternate versions of ourselves—the person we'd be if we'd made different choices, taken different paths, married different people. We assume that different decisions would have made us happier or more successful. But Murakami is pointing at something harder to accept: that our choices, even the messy or regrettable ones, aren't separate from who we are. They're expressions of it.
This matters because it dissolves a common trap we fall into—the fantasy that our true self exists independent of our decisions, waiting to emerge if circumstances were just right. In reality, you become who you are through what you actually choose, moment by moment. That failed relationship, the career risk that didn't pan out, the embarrassing thing you said—they shaped you into the person capable of reflecting on them now. To redo your life differently would mean becoming someone else entirely.
The surprising part is that accepting this doesn't have to be depressing. It can actually free you from the exhausting work of perpetual regret. You can't change the past, but you can stop wishing to become a different person. Instead, you can work with who you've actually become and steer from there.