Fujiko Suda / Reflection

Dropping in after a year and a half

I just felt like I wasn't saying anything worthwhile.  I felt like I was wasting people's time.  So I stopped writing into this blog.  If you visited my Japanese Reflections blog and looked around for a bit, you would have noticed that I was writing into that again recently too.

There's this sense of urgency that I want to give away whatever the experience or knowledge I have accumulated over the years to those who might benefit from them.  Cultural understanding, especially of Japanese and Americans from the middle class society.  Business bi-lingual ability.  How to really communicate in English in different countries like US, UK, Netherland.  Office creation process in Japan.  Dealing with different cultures growing up.  Child birth experience.  Making the most out of change that comes one's way.

Someone said, when you die, only thing you take with you is what you leave behind.

What I learned in Taos, New Mexico, from a Poet, Soge, is that we live to grow, learn and heal.  I've known about growing and learning, but healing was something I have not thought about.  I think I heal through giving.  Something else she said that felt like rain on parched garden.  Soge talked about teaching the grandchildren.

The grandchildren!  I was beating myself up because the best I did for my kids didn't turn out so good.  But when I thought of having a chance to do the different kind of the "best", it just felt so wonderful.

Being reminded of what is important

Whew, lots of things have been occupying my mind and time from November last year and now.  Looks like this situation will continue on at least until May.  Mixture of work, family and friends. 

Yesterday's time with a dear friend who moved from Tokyo to Taiwan last year was great!  He asked me, "So how old do the kids have to be in order for you to not be thinking about them so much?".  I immediately answered, "Never!  I will always be thinking of them."  This thought was never defined within me.  The thought immediately turned into clear string of words, because the question turned out to be a framework to express what I subconsciously felt.

It's like reading Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea series gave me the opportunity to remember what my life has been about, what the journey mean to me.  It has been all about trying to live a wholesome life.  About becoming whole.  We all have different starts and turns and twists along the road, and the choices we make at each turns and twists, forks on the road help us define who we are, what we subconsciously feel. 

Everything about life explained in 5 lines

Only in silence the word,

only dark the light,

only in dying life:

bright the hawk's flight

on the empty sky.

Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Mastery

The trick here is not only to test the edges of the envelope, but also to walk the fine line between endless, galless practice and those alluring goals that appear along the way.  At our dojo, we present aikido, first of all, as an endless path.  But we also have periodic examinations that are rigorous, challenjing, and sometimes quite dramatic.  The exam for first-degree black belt is, in particular, a rite of passage.  The candidate faces a three- to six-months-long period leading up to the exam, which becomes not only an intensive cram course in advanced techniques but also a physical and psychological trial by fire.  During this ordeal, no personal flaw, no secret idiosyncracy, is likely to remain hidden.  If all goes well, the exam itself becomes an expression not of ego but of essence, a climactic and transcendent moment in a long journey.  But the journey is what counts.  In the words of the ancient Eastern adage:  "Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.  After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."  The new black belt is expected to be on the mat the next day, ready to take the first fall.

Mastery:  They Keys to Success And Long-Term Fullfilment, George Leonard

And so it is with worklife.  With raising a family.

Things I had all buried up inside

The books that have really big impact on me, I haven't been writing about.  The emotions are so strong, they are hard to convey properly in words.

Maybe about a month ago, I read Michael Lewis' Moneyball:  The Art of Winning An Unfair Game.  By mistake, I ordered the book in big print for people with sight problem.  Reading a book in such big print felt embarrassing, so it took me maybe half a year or more before begin reading it.  But once I got started, it had me.

What struck me is, talent, so much talent, can make a person miserable.  You think you ought to make something of yourself because you are so good at something.  But somehow, maybe from not meeting with the right coach at the right time, or not trying hard enough at some point, or getting an injury, or whatever, you don't make the most of your talent.  Not too many of us have obvious dazzling talent like Billy Beane, but a lot of us were really good at something, but somehow we didn't pursue, and it feels like we wasted our lives, our talents.  If only I tried harder, is the thought that haunts us.  I'm one of those people who was voted "most talented" in teenage years, because my drawings won ribbons at competitions, my singing got me into all state chorus for the state of Florida, good hand-eye coordination helped me get into girl's varsity team of volleyball and tennis.  So did any of these "talents" help me earn a living?  No.  Maybe because I wasn't disciplined enough to try hard at anything, because when I hit a wall after steady climb, I didn't persue any further.  Maybe that habit hauted me for the rest of my life.  Things came easy to me, up to some point.  Then when I hit the wall, I would just give up, pursue something else.  Funny only thing I didn't give up was something I wasn't good at to begin with, business.  Probably because I didn't have other choice at that point in life.  I certainly don't want to live an artist's life.  I can't do sports like I used to. 

The Moneyball talks about the personality matching the game of baseball.  Billy Beane was more like a football kind of guy.  The book makes tragedy out of Billy Beane's earlier life.  How his momentary temptation to money and glory ruined his life.  How he turned his back on the scholarship at the Stanford University playing both baseball and football for the wad of dollars and glamour of professional baseball players.  He ended up with no college education, no degree, no real lasting glamour and money. 

I really LOVE the story, but I don't feel sorry for Billy Beane.  So far, he's had a great life.  He was in constant struggle, but so what?  He did FEEL the entire time.  He lived fully.  Pain and sorrow are no fun.  But I'm of a school of thought, anything that doesn't kill you is good for you.  Especially when all these things happen the first half of a person's life.  After such first half, anything in the second half feels so easy, so nice. 

Billy Beane's life still goes on, pursuing the dream of winning the World Series.  Whatever happens, he paid his due.  His story gives me hope.  We become old, and we can't do the kind of physical things we used to be able to do.  But we make peace with our own personality, and do the things that come natural to us, and we could win.  Winning, as in being satisfied with one's life. 

Quote

I was looking up the right way to spell "ai-yah" through Google. What pleasant surprise to stumble onto Denise Chow's homepage. It felt like visiting an abandoned garden. Still very beautiful, but it only holds memories. Her "50 Ways to Know You're an Asian" is delightful, and Quotes so beautiful. I guess by now, she's a senior in her university.

Which made me wonder. So many sights have been abandoned and still available for anyone to view on the internet. It keeps accumulating these echoes of life. How remote yet so powerful are words and image like these I discovered in Denise's site today.

Denise Chow, if you ever read this, you certainly made a difference in my life!

Spiritual accomplishments

It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. "I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know haow to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked here if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here - I am here- I am life, eternal life.'"

Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl

Milan Kundera's Laughable Loves

Only a couple of pages into the first story, Nobody Will Laugh, I was feeling uncomfortable. This isn’t exactly the kind of story that inspires me. After couple of more pages, and I was beginning to feel a bit angry with myself. Why am I continuing to read this story? If I didn’t enjoy it, then stop! Somehow, I skimmed to the end of the story, determined that if I didn’t like the second story, I will return this book mostly unread to my friend, despite the fact he recommended it to me heartily.

My first reaction when I was halfway through the second story, “The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire” is that of amusement. So this is what my girlfriend was talking about. She said that the ultimate thing all men care about is getting laid.

I kept on reading. “Symposium” was interesting. The twists and turns! I think I am most like Elisabet and then next like Flajsman. Elisabet because I am quite simple minded, not aware of much of finesse or nuances that abounds around me. Flajsman because I am always making up stories in my head and am convinced by these stories. No, no, I got that wrong. I decided I want to be like Elisabet many years ago, because I just got tired of feeling too much, thinking too much. I decided life was much easier and bearable if I lived moment by moment. About being like Flajsman, I simply am that way.

Many of the situations in these short stories felt familiar to me. I just never thought of describing details of the situations and feelings into words. That goes for the recurring theme of aging too.

It seems the theme is about people keep falling in love throughout their lives, even in very happy marriages. Like Baby Face's song, Love Makes It Happen. (The song is light hearted.) Kundera is describing love without neither embellishing it nor renouncing it. He’s just telling it like it is. Mostly physical, because we are nothing without bodies, mysterious feelings and spirits and thoughts that are hard to be distinguished from the bodily feelings.

My previous boss used to say, uncomfortable is good. Reading Milan Kundera again after reading Unbearable Lightness of Being about 18 years ago reminded me why I stopped read fictions, unless it is a simple and straight forward one. It occurred to me I have been avoiding having my difficult feelings brought up to surface, but of course, some times I can't avoid them. I like being simple, living moment by moment, grateful for all that life is giving me. Uncomfortable is good. Reading Laughable Loves forced me to learn a new lesson: although I choose to simplify life, things are really complex.

Wish

If I were to with for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye, which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparlking, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?

Soren Kierkegaard

How some of us become strong

We had a great time talking, exchanging ideas and thoughts. My friend and I agreed that we grow because we were given the opportunity to grow. Our choice was to either keep being miserable about the past situation we lived through, or accept the past, learn, and move on.

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien