Security in Life

My English ex-husband used to often use the word daikokubashira (the central pillar of a house). Sure he was probably proud of the fact that he was supporting a family of four, but more than anything it seemed like he liked the way it sounded – daikokubashira.

Having been an international student, he went on to have a family and become a translator. It was pretty reckless of him to be doing Japanese to English translation, seeing as he wasn’t really qualified, but he rode the economic wave of the time, the jobs poured in and he had all the work he could handle. Thanks to him, I was able to work at my own pace while also raising our children. Truly, he was the daikokubashira of our family.

We later ended up getting divorced and I was left without that reliable daikokubashira. However, I had just gotten a full-time position at the place where I had been working for the last few years. That job sheltered me like a huge umbrella. As you’d expect, not having my pillar to lean on threw me off balance, but the universe provided me with the perfect safety net – a stable job – and that job supported me all the way through my journey of independence.

However, over the past few years, this umbrella that had completely sheltered me seemed to be closing in around me and all sorts of restrictions started popping up: ‘this isn’t allowed’, ‘you can’t do that’, ‘this is the only option’. Everything is subject to central oversight, people are replaced by machines, and quantity gets valued over quality… A cold front approached, bringing with it a harsh atmosphere of ‘you can’t be so idealistic at times like this’, replacing the vibe of abundance  and tolerance we had had up to then.

‘Nothing stays the same forever. Everything changes with the times’.

One might understand this intellectually and one might even give this kind of advice to the people around you. But it’s actually really hard to properly handle these changes, when you’re the one who’s going through it. When something starts to change, it starts off as extremely uncomfortable and we have an instinctive knee-jerk reaction against it. It takes extraordinary courage to let go of something that you’ve grown accustomed to. So, even though you’re wearing yourself out on the inside, you can’t really move on.

However, if you’re desperately clinging onto things, challenging situations will continue to come along, one after the other: if you’re married, your heart might get ripped into pieces by your spouse having an affair; if it’s your job, restructuring might lead to you being forced out - the things we expect to be stable gradually crumble away.

Sometimes you can’t be protected even with a daikokubashira and a big umbrella, and expecting your life to be made secure by a dependable person or a dependable job brings a whole lot of risk.

Spouses are living, breathing people and there are things they can’t do no matter how hard they try and there’s no escaping the fact that work conditions change along with society. While you might feel like screaming ‘Liar!’ or ‘Traitor!’ or ‘This isn’t what I signed up for!’, to everything there is a season. These kinds of changes are difficult at the time, but when we look back on them later, they’ll pretty much always have led us in the right direction.

At first glance, things like divorce and restructuring are incredibly cruel and miserable, but the fact is the heavens have our back, saying ’be brave! Take that one step forward!’  You might think it’s dangerous to do so, but just because you’ve walled yourself off and are always on your guard or you’ve chosen a seemingly safe path, that doesn’t mean you’re safe.

It seems to me that true ‘safety’ lies in knowing that you’ll be ok no matter what happens next, and being able to trust that while you may have fallen on hard times now, you can definitely make it out the other end without being worse for wear. Whether it’s God, or Buddha, or the Heavens, or the Universe, believe in something that is big and invisible and trust in the complete power of that love… If we can manage to submit to these feelings of assurance, our lives would be so much easier.

 [You can find the original post ｢人生の保障」in Japanese here.]