Try a little jikochuu

The expression jikochuu 自己中(self-centredness) is used for people who think about nothing other than getting themselves ahead. In English too, the word “self-centred” carries negative connotations and having a “selfless” attitude is praised.

Of course people who are indiscriminate in pursuing their own profit, power, fame and status and don’t give a thought to the trouble that may result for those around them or the destruction of the environment are nothing but self-centred.

Conversely, there is nothing but gratitude and admiration for the courage of people who throw themselves into the raging sea to rescue someone who’s drowning or fire fighters who, without a thought for their own lives, save children from inside burning buildings. Putting one’s interests aside and thinking about others is incredibly important and it’s for this very reason that it gets taught so strongly both at school and at home.

  We should consider other people’s feelings.

  We should listen closely to other people’s opinions.
  We should think about things from other people’s perspectives.

I think these are all important, but if these are the only things that get taught and we neglect the message of “take care of yourself”, this might give rise to some misunderstanding. Instead of “take care of others as well as yourself”, it might come across like “Good people always put themselves second” or “Thou shalt put the needs of others before thine own”.

There are in fact parents and teachers who are unwittingly transmitting these kinds of messages to their children. For example, let’s say a family is going out for a walk together and one of the kids says “I don’t want to go”. Then they say that they want to go to so-and-so’s house down the road. If on the walk, the family stop’s by so-and-so’s house and the kid gets to go in and play, then there’s no harm done and everybody’s happy.

But there are parents who will feel like “The whole point was that the whole family was going to go for a walk together” and allow their disappointment to show, snapping “How selfish can you get! You can't just do whatever suits you”, the result being that the message the child will take away from that is “Not doing what my parents want is selfish”.

Doing the things you like, saying what you want to say and expressing yourself freely are different from “being selfish”. But, if a parent has unresolved emotional issues, these issues will get entangled and have an impact on the child. If the parents disapprove or get angry or disagree any time the child is just doing what they want to do, the child will become subservient to the parents, or at least pretend to be, in order to try to survive. Then, even after they've gone out into the world, they will continue to keep this way of getting on in the world as a “handy little trick”.

People who put others’ needs in front of their own and are “considerate” are appreciated, they are liked and they get desired... They'll have people fall in love with them and they'll live happily ever after...

Or so I thought...

I’m exhausted...I can’t be bothered...Who gives! This is ridiculous! This is so stupid! What on earth am I doing this for?

You get irritable, you get depressed and you get pissed off. But the absolute worst is when you see selfish people having all the fun.

“I've given all I have for other people. Why do I feel so empty?”

“I've put up with so much just so that I can be someone who isn't a selfish person…”

Putting your own needs “to one side”, means putting other people's needs before your own, just for the moment – it's not allowing that state of affairs to continue indefinitely. But if you're constantly being told that other people come first and act according to that, little by little you start to shrink and who you are gets pushed far away.

Then there's the paradox that if you're not looking out for yourself, you're being selfish at a time when you can’t afford to be at all.

“All I needed to do was to just put my own needs “to one side”. But, have I left them behind and abandoned them?”

If we're not in the habit of thinking about ourselves, our thoughts in every circumstance will rush immediately to others - “Well, that's what he said” “I don't think she'd think that” “How are they going to feel?”

But, at times like these, the thing we ought to be thinking about is “What do I want?” What other people think and what other people are going to do are things that only those people can ever know and as long as we're trying to “figure them out”, nothing  good can come of it. Now, if I say that, it might be met with “It's not “trying to figure them out”; it's empathy and that's a virtue!”

Of course thinking about other people is important and it's necessary to be considerate. But, if this is all that we're doing and we end up thinking “Where have I disappeared to?” then we should be entitled to put ourselves more to the fore.

 

Returning our focus to ourselves and placing ourselves at the very centre – that's a positive self-centredness. At the same time, we'd be respecting other people and leaving them to their own business. As our balance is being restored, we'll start seeing our feelings emerge from the fog. If we can acknowledge our own feelings, then surely we'll be able to convey them as well.

Being true to yourself and telling people your true feelings takes considerable courage, but by doing so you'll be able to liberate yourself and those around you, helping them move forward. Rather than 自己中 (jikochuu – self-centredness), we might call this 自己忠 (jikochuu – being loyal to yourself).

There might be some pretty severe bumps at the start, but the people who don't gel with the new you will gradually drift away and be replaced by people who do... This is just natural selection at work – there's no need to worry.

Relax and why not give it a try.

  [You can find the original article in Japanese 「自己忠の勧め」here. ] 

 

Let us receive more blessings.

“The universe gives us so many gifts but what we actually receive is only 2% of that.”

I can't remember where I heard that, but it had a real impact on me. I was first struck by the part that says “The universe gives us so many gifts”. Like “The heavens overflow with love” and “The gods send only their angels”, it's the kind of idea that scientists tend to laugh off, crying “Prove it!” As a result, lots of people are cynical about this kind of thing, but, without a shadow of a doubt, I'm in total agreement. I don’t know why, but whenever I come across people saying things like “the universe gives us so many gifts”, I feel so happy, like “I’ve always thought that!”  I get filled with this sense of everything finally making sense – this wasn’t in any of my textbooks and I didn’t get taught it at school, but finally, someone’s told me about this!

The gifts it talks about are the things that come right when you need them - a flash of inspiration, an opportunity, a chance meeting.... or perhaps the book you've been looking for, the car you're meant to buy or the house that's just right for you. But, I got to thinking about the part that says “what we actually receive is only 2% of that”. Does this mean  that the universe is offering us things with a “here you go” and “I've got a present for you”, and we’re turning them away, saying “I don't need it”, “Nah, I'm good” or “I'm fine”?

If we’re always so busy and we’re thinking about so many things and have so many distractions, we’re never going to notice that the “gifts of the universe” are right in front of our eyes. Even though the universe provides us with exactly what we need, we take no notice and keep on fretting and fussing, all for nothing. But the good news is there's nothing really that we have to do to receive these gifts. On the contrary, all we need to do is slow down, still ourselves and be looking out for the signs.

In English, they say “All you need to do is allow good things to come to you”. The key here is the word “allow”. It's not about desperately trying to make things happen or putting effort into bringing things to you. It's about just letting it wash over you like a river. The big “rocks” that block this river of blessings might be things like a hectic lifestyle and feelings of negativity, but a lot of them are our beliefs about receiving - “I can't be given this over other people”, “I don't have the right to receive such things”. Without knowing it, we really do seem to be putting ourselves down.

However, we can resolve all of these things within ourselves. If we examine each of them one by one and clear them out, we can break down the dam that was blocking that river and it will flow again.

The universe only gives us exactly what we need right now. So, like little children, let us smile, let out a big “thank you” and just accept these gifts with open arms. The joy which we are so blessed to receive becomes infectious and will spread like wildfire to those around us. We are all connected after all.

  [You can find the original article in Japanese 「もっといただこう」here. ]

The Power of Foreign Languages

My classes this year have all finished. In the southern hemisphere the seasons are the other way around, so the first semester in autumn begins in March. Consequently, the end of year exams are in November.

I'm always relieved at this time of year, having finished a year's worth of classes, but there's something special about this year and I'm filled with emotion. This is because it's the final day of a course that I have taught for over 15 years. The attendance rate of the course was higher than usual from the beginning, and even when the students were getting swamped with work for their other subjects towards the end, most of them still turned up. I've been very fortunate to be blessed in my final year with such motivated students.

At university, more than a few people are of the opinion  that “language learning is mechanical” and therefore “it's nothing more than acquiring a skill”, but foreign languages have a real power. People often mention the “cross-cultural understanding” effect. By coming into contact with a culture outside of your own, you broaden your outlook. Through learning a language, you learn the ways of thinking and values specific to that culture and break free from having a narrow worldview.

But more than that, language studies also become a chance to get to know ourselves.

By the time they reach university, a lot of students already have firmly set opinions and ways of thinking about things and struggle to deviate from them. Even though in reality they're still really young, they can still be like “I'm this kind of person”.

The same goes for their personal abilities – perhaps because of something someone might have said to them once, they become convinced that they can't draw, or that they're tone-deaf, or that they can't write well and resign themselves to not being able to do all sorts of things.

I want them to think more about questions like “who am I?”, but there really aren't those kinds of opportunities in a normal university class. But, in a foreign language class, there's mountains of material that allows you to do just that.

Good at, not good at, was good at, wasn't good at

Can, Can't, Could, Couldn't

In lessons on conjugating na adjectives and verbs, we use questions relating to people's abilities like “Are you good at singing?” or “Can you draw?”. So, even though I'm just checking if they can get the form right, if a student says “I'm bad at singing”, I ask them “Were you bad at it when you were a kid?” If they still answer “Yes, I was”, I throw in a “Did you like singing?”. No kid dislikes things like singing and drawing pictures, so they always say “Yes, I did”.

So, all that singing and drawing and dancing you loved so much, don't you do that anymore? Why? Don't you like it anymore? Or do you actually like it but you're bad at it so you stopped?

If they were getting hounded with questions like this in a conversation in their own language, what would end up happening is they would get annoyed and start deflecting - “I dunno... whatever...” But with a language they've only just started learning, they have to put everything they have into trying to answer even the simplest question. They can't just toss out “the answer they always give”, so they end up having to start afresh and take time putting together an answer to that question.

In a foreign language, you can't get away with the kind of answer that in your own language you'd automatically give without thinking. This kind of lesson, where they have to take their time and search for the right words and stitch the sentence together, presents them with an opportunity to re-examine their own answers and think “why am I so set in my thinking?”

In both my intermediate and advanced courses, I always include essay topics that allow for self-reflection and I give them tasks in which they can showcase their creativity. I design the courses in such a way that they might discover somewhere a “new” self, different from the self they thought they were up to now, or they might notice their own self-imposed restrictions and be set free from them.

The good old days of students being able to practise in a small class five times a week are over but I still hope I can give lessons where my students can discover new things and learn more about themselves. I'm teaching an elective course next year and I might even be able to go all out holistic with it–  I'm looking forward to that.

 [You can find the original article in Japanese 「外国語の威力」here. It was posted in October 2012.]

 

 

Different Strokes for Different Folks

The following story all happened 40 years ago in Tokyo.

When I was sitting my high school entrance exams, I went to check out two schools that were in the group I was looking at going to. Both of them were about an hour from where I was living in Setagaya and I got the same kind of vibe from the buildings and the grounds and the students at each of them.

Both were mufti schools and had an air of freedom about them and I was out at one of the schools, thinking that either would be fine, when a P.E. class started on the grounds of the school. The atmosphere there was somehow different to the school I'd looked at previously – it was what the students were wearing. They were all wearing completely different things. The other school had a proper P.E. uniform with matching colours that everyone wore. But here, everyone had their own style – a black t-shirt with blue shorts, a green tracksuit with a white stripe. Looking at the students' feet as they walked down the halls, their slippers were all different as well. Instead of wearing those white ones with a red or blue stripe that you’d expect, most of them were just wearing their own sandals.

As soon as I saw that, my mind was made up, “It's got to be this one!” Up to then, I thought I'd be fine with whichever one I got into, but now I had one more thing to ask God for. Then God totally answered my prayers.

This school without matching uniforms or slippers or P.E. gear was a school where you really were free. There weren't any rules saying “you're not allowed to do this” (that I can recall), but nonetheless all the students applied themselves both academically and athletically of their own accord.

Thinking about it now, it was probably at that high school that I developed my philosophy that children do best when adults trust them.  And it was at that school that I learnt not only that “it's ok to be different”, but that “variety is the spice of life” and being different is a good thing.

If left to their own devices, children will choose things that they like. If you look at the things they’ve chosen as a whole, it will be beautiful with myriad colours and all manner of shapes and designs. It's in this kind of environment that imagination and creativity are cultivated.

But now we've got primary schools where all the pencils are standard issue and only white erasers are allowed.  Apparently it's because if the kids have patterned pencils and cartoon erasers they'll get distracted and won't be able to concentrate on studying....Isn’t that sad? We’re only talking about pencils and erasers here. Shouldn’t we let them have whatever they like? It's nothing excessive and it really is very important to have things you like around you. It gets chosen not “because everyone's got one” or “because it's in at the moment”, but “because I like it” - it's my pencil, it's my eraser. As for studying, isn't it way more fun when done with your favourite pencil and eraser?

Even if a school's slogan is something like “Bring out individuality! Have a carefree environment!”, in reality it will have  so many rules that it will be stifling individuality. Then again, it's really hard to say what things should be prescribed and to what extent things should be regulated. It's completely different depending on the culture or even the time period. There's no perfect model and everyone's somewhat in the dark.

But one thing that can be said when making these sorts of judgements is that, as much as possible, I want to make love-based judgements as opposed to fear-based judgements. Saying “Letting them do whatever they want will surely cause problems for them.” is an example of a fear-based judgment, and we often feel like  “I don't know what's going to happen and that makes me uncomfortable so, I’m not going to do it. I'm not going to allow it.”

If it was just you, you'd probably manage, but when it comes to your little boy or girl, it’s so much harder. But children who are trusted from a young age have high self-esteem and will never be totally reckless. Even if they test you and put you on edge, sooner or later they'll get back on track.

What's more of an issue is teenagers who are chained by rules and punishments. There're more than a few university students who have been obedient since they were little and have managed to get into a leading university who say choosing their own subjects and expressing their own opinions is the hardest thing for them to do. If they don't grow up choosing and deciding things for themselves, all of a sudden they’ll be told to do so once they become adults and they’re not going to know how to.

Every child in their heart is begging “Mum, Dad, trust me!” Being “love-based” is about respecting who your child is and entrusting them to the love of the universe. Unlike the old days, this is a time filled with all sorts of choices and we adults get paralyzed and flustered. But the children who are born into this generation come fully equipped with the tools to properly deal with those things.

So, let's relax and let them go for it. When we summon the courage and let go, our children can come face to face with themselves. This is something I think we adults need to learn to do.

 [You can find the original post in Japanese 「十人十色」here.]

 

 

Internal Body Clock

Everyone has their own idea of what counts as a “luxury”, but to me, luxury is that first moment of waking up in the morning.

When the time comes for me to get up, my eyes naturally open up, light and easy. On work days, I wake up around two hours before heading out and on my days off, about an hour later than that.

When I have an early morning flight, I do set my alarm just in case, but each and every time my eyes will be open well before the alarm rings.

Tick-tock tick-tock…

My internal body clock signals me when the time is right.

Apparently you can now get alarm clocks which slowly wake you up by starting off soft and getting steadily louder. After all, we all want to wake up slowly, steadily and gently, right?

I've heard some delightful things like how when you're asleep, your soul slips away from your body and is free to roam about – when your soul returns, surely it's better for it to come in with a soft landing rather than crashing down in a nosedive.

Babies get all out of sorts when woken from a deep sleep and surely adults would be in just as bad a mood if something were to interrupt their sleep.

“That’s all well and good, but…”

Be that as it may, our bodies are a hundred times way more onto it than we think. On the one hand, it's slave to its master's orders, but it's in tune to us on a level we can't even perceive and functions accordingly. So, if you in any way think “there's no way I can wake up naturally in the morning”, your body will follow suit with “that's totally how it is” and will end up sleeping as long as it can.

But if you start to think “alright, I might just somehow be able to wake up naturally,” your internal body clock, having been given the chance - “finally, you've noticed me. It's time to show you what I can do!” - will cooperate with you wholeheartedly.

Modern people put faith in their alarm clocks' functionality but don't put any faith in their own bodies' functions – isn’t this the opposite of how things should be? Who on earth first suggested that medicine from a pharmacy works better than the natural healing powers we have in our bodies?

All alarm clocks do is ring at whatever time we've set them for, but our internal body clock regulates our sleeping patterns perfectly and makes it possible for us to wake up naturally.

If you're “alarm clock dependent”, please, please try this little prayer, starting tonight: “Let me be able to wake up naturally tomorrow.”

Of course, you should set your clock as always to start with. But, before long, you'll get to the point where you'll wake up a little bit before your alarm rings. Once that happens for a good number of days in a row, take the plunge and try sleeping without setting an alarm. You'll be on edge, but if you think to yourself that it'll be fine, it will be fine. Then, if you can do it once, that's it.

Want to have a good mood and greet the morning feeling refreshed? Try this!

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「体内時計」here.]

 

 

 

 

Self-Love

jiko chuushin (self-centredness), jiko manzoku (self-satisfaction) and jiko shuchou (self-assertiveness)… they all have negative connotations. Of course you're not going to get along with people if you think only about yourself, if you’re only concerned with pleasing yourself and if you only ever talk about the things you want to talk about.

But I think they’re only off-putting because of the word “only” and these “self-whatever” attitudes must have started out as something positive. “Focusing on yourself” doesn’t mean thinking just about yourself at the expense of everyone around you. It’s about objectively identifying how you’re feeling and what you want to do and conducting yourself in a way that’s true to yourself.

In English, “self-centred” is used synonymously with “selfish”, but if you say someone is “centred” (without the “self”) it takes on a different meaning; that of someone who is confident, well-grounded and well-balanced. The same goes for self-satisfaction. Whether we can get happy to start with is something that's really important. It's only when we ourselves are satisfied that we can then spread that feeling of satisfaction. Conversely, when we're feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied we don't really have it in us to think about those around us.

“Self-Assertiveness” --- recently, people in Japan have been coming to realise the necessity of being straight up and saying what they actually think. However, a lot of people probably still say to themselves “I’ve said exactly what I wanted to, but people didn’t really like it…”

Being born into Japanese society, we were taught not to put ourselves at the fore and to maintain the wa* with those around us over everything else. Even though we can say a lot of good comes out of this, it also results in a lot of strain. Think first and foremost about others and put yourself second…we were taught that’s the proper order of things. In actual fact, isn’t it pretty much the opposite?

*wa: harmony, particularly in inter-personal relationships, that ought not be disturbed.

We have this ideal of “putting ourselves second and being of service to others” but the fact of the matter is people who put themselves at the service of others actually take great care of themselves. If you’re true to yourself, actively enjoy the things you like, properly put the things you want to say into words, you feel fulfilled and at peace and you come around to wanting to help people and be nice to them.

Being a devoted person isn’t about resisting doing the things you want to or making sacrifices. I think it’s more about being happy and, as a result, sharing that happiness. If you have a full glass, you have something to share. But if your own glass is empty, you have nothing to give.

Despite this, there’re tonnes of people who believe that you have to put yourself second and put everything they have into doing their good deeds. But if you don’t take care of yourself, all sorts of emotions start building up.

 

   I’m giving it everything I’ve got! Why doesn’t anyone else see that?

   Everyone’s got it so much easier than I do!

   Blood, sweat and tears and I can’t get anyone to notice!

 “Why doesn’t anyone see”, “everyone's got it so much easier”, “I can't get them to notice” - these all have a focus external to ourselves. But, you can't force people to change, so you feel totally powerless.

At times like this, it would be best to shift our perspective back to ourselves. And let's throw ourselves into the things we love and the things we enjoy. If you're too busy, lighten your schedule and make some free time.

They say that in order to love someone, you have to love yourself first. The truth seems to be that if you don't love yourself, you can't love anyone else. The English phrase “self-love” is about taking care of yourself, respecting yourself and loving yourself. But the Japanese translation jikoai seems to mean something akin to “selfish arrogance.”

Here again, it must have the connotation of loving only yourself. But if you're able to truly love yourself, it becomes impossible for that love not to spread to those around you... Thus, “loving only oneself” is a virtual impossibility. On top of that, that feeling of selfish arrogance is worlds away from what love is.

Lost in translation....

Things like “self” and “love” can be interpreted lots of different ways, but, to put it simply, it comes down to giving yourself all the love you can and freeing yourself from the chains that bind you – that's just how it feels.

Centring ourselves, Satisfying ourselves, Asserting ourselves, Loving ourselves
– any and all of them would be most welcome! Let's start taking care of ourselves and regain some balance.

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「自分への愛」here.]

Extended Family

It’s usually the case that when you get married, your family grows. You become related “in law” to your husband or wife's parents and siblings and your family is suddenly twice the size with mothers-in-law and brothers-in-law and everyone else.

But, in the case of my family it was after I got divorced that it got bigger.

Even after separating from my husband, I still keep in touch with the family I had when I was married. (Before his parents died I went to England on my own to see them and some years ago I went to visit his sister in London). But on top of that I’ve connected with my ex-husband’s new partner’s family as well.

For Christmas this year, we ended up having it at my daughter’s house because that’s where my grandson is. We were all there but so were her father (my ex-husband) and his partner and one of her daughters as well. Some years ago it even went as far as her ex-husband and his new partner being there too.

In this country, it’s not uncommon for couples who’ve split up to maintain a good relationship with each other and thanks to that the children get saved a lot of grief. But you don’t know whether such people will actually all get together as one family at Christmas. In fact, you get kids who have to run straight to lunch with their dad right after breakfast at their mum’s house.

My ex-husband’s partner is American and they’ve been together now for well over 15 years. My two daughters call her two daughters ‘sisters’ (and vice versa) and on Facebook they list their father’s partner as their “mother”. She and I are Facebook friends, just as she’s my sister in Tokyo’s feesubukku no tomodachi.

On Christmas, her and I nattered away for hours together about clothes (her dress was 'a chameleon dress’ designed in New Zealand. Not only is it reversible, you can wear it any number of ways depending how you tie it and fold it, etc.), our family, our health, our gardens… there’s no limit to the things we can talk about.

The best thing is that we can really have a good chuckle together.
My ex-husband was taking photos of the two of us laughing our heads off together - that's something that leaves me particularly tickled.

Whenever I get asked “Don’t you feel jealous or hold a grudge against her?” my answer is always “Not at all”.

Just as I’ve never once regretted getting divorced (not even for a moment, to use an English superlative) I have never for a moment felt jealously towards her.

Of course, I’m still a person with feelings just like anyone else and I’ve been envious of the two of them being so close and travelling around the world together. But what I’m envious of isn't her being with him, but the kind of lifestyle the two of them have.

Far from being jealous, I am just so thankful to her, from the bottom of my heart, for everything she has done to support the father of my children. Now that my children have grown up, they’ll say things like “It’s so great having her there” and her presence has been felt so deeply within my family.

She loves South America, and when I told her about the Sloth Club, she said “I love sloths!” I then straightaway sent her the English version of the Sloth Club website.
 
*Namakemono Club, a part of the Japanese “slow living” movement

For my grandson, she’s his grandmother too. When I see him smiling so happily being cuddled by her, I think to myself that’s what love is.

Merry Christmas!

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「拡大家族」 here.]

Girl on Girl, Man to Man

Below is a photo I saw on Facebook leading up to Valentine's day.
The last item, homo choko (homo chocolates), is probably meant to be a play on the item above it, tomo choko (friend chocolates). But in what way are they using the word “homo”? If a gay person were to see this sort of thing, I wonder how they'd feel about it.


Statistics suggest that 1 in every 10-15 people is either gay or bisexual. That would mean that in a class of 40 students, 3 or 4 of them would be gay.

Despite this, being gay still continues to be treated as being “other” and there are many societies where gays are targets of discrimination. How hard it must be to have to continue to hide who you are, even from your friends and your family.

I heard that there are lots of cases of depression within the gay community. But I guess it's no wonder that that's the case when you have to hide away and deny your sexual orientation, something which is at the very core of who you are. Now, it's still baby steps as people get to understand more about homosexuality but we're definitely getting there.

Last week, a bill was passed in the French National Assembly allowing same sex marriage. It's  such a fantastic achievement for France, particularly in light of the number of Catholics there. But here in a country as free as ours, New Zealand, gays still aren't allowed to get married.

I really can't believe that there are people still here in the 21st Century who are still harping on about how “Marriage is between a man and a woman”. People should be able to love freely and without restriction, regardless of their partner' gender.

In the old days, the kind of shallow thinking that disallowed marriage between people who were different and prohibited marriage on the basis of race and nationality and the colour of someone's skin went unchallenged, but don't you think it's an embarrassment for us now to be falling back in time by who knows how many decades and prohibiting gay marriage?

Here in this country, there are of course still people who don't want people to know that they're gay. But it's pretty common now to see photos of a gay couple's house in glossy interior design mags and lesbian kissing scenes in TV and movies don't cause quite the scandal they used to. We're starting to get to a point where being gay isn't really anything special.

Recently in Japan, courageous people have been coming forward, out and proud, declaring that they're gay and writing about their experiences. But, as I'm sure you can guess, Japan's also full of people for whom being able to “come out” is still a long way off.

  You’re single, but you can't go out with the person you like
  Even if you are with someone, no-one is happy for you
  And as icing on the cake, you get forced into a sham marriage...

And so we have people who feel like this and flee these sorts of countries, moving to some place that's more free and never looking back.

I happen to know a Japanese woman who is living together with a Kiwi woman and they appear for all intents and purposes to be free and happy. Working with a gay male friend of theirs, the two of them ended up being blessed with two children. Their children have two mothers, but they call one Mummy and the other one Mama and there doesn't seem to be any confusion for them.

A student of mine from two years ago contacted me once completely out of the blue. I hadn't seen him for a long time and he looked so different – he was so alive and it seemed like a world of weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He told me “That year, I was really struggling with the fact that I was gay. But I've finally managed to accept that for myself and recently, I've even found myself a boyfriend and...”

Whenever I'm taking a class, I make sure not to forget that there's likely to be some gay students there. If the topic of boys and girls dating comes up, I make sure that I emphasise that a guy's partner might be his boyfriend. Some students will giggle, but to them I say “What's so funny? Gay people exist too, don't they?”

If you're gay, you've got at least one person right here who is genuinely happy for you and who accepts you as you are – that's the one message I hope really gets out to you.

[You can find the original post in Japanese｢男と男、女と女」 here.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Organic Green Roots

http://organicgreenroots.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/4-heart-flr.jpg

Men Who Bake Cakes

We were having a party for my eldest daughter’s birthday and I had decided to make two cakes – an orange rum cake and a rich chocolate cake.

I heard that she had a large group of friends coming and I was wondering if two cakes would be enough when all of a sudden I saw one more chocolate cake already sitting in the kitchen. A friend of mine and I put some finishing touches on it along with my two cakes, dusting them with icing sugar and decorating them with flowers. We then laid the three cakes out on the table on the veranda and put in the candles – Happy Birthday!

It turned out that the person who’d made the other chocolate cake (with nuts in it) was my daughter’s husband’s close friend. He’d just had a baby three weeks before and is a brand new father.
I asked him “Did you separate the eggs?”
I giggled a little to myself at the fact that such questions are usually kept just between us girls. But he didn’t seem to react at all and replied, straight-faced, “No, for this one you don’t separate the eggs, you just throw them in.”

A male friend of his overhead this and jumped in with “Really? You don’t separate them? In my recipe you separate them”.
“How do you get it to rise without beating in the egg whites?”
“You cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer. That’s how you get air into it right?”
“Really? In my one you heat the butter and the chocolate together in a water bath.”
“Mine too. How many grams of flour do you put in yours?”

We went on chatting like this for a while enjoying our symposium on the finer points of cake preparation with no hint that any of this was at all out of the ordinary.
“You two boys really know what you’re talking about huh” I said.
“Now if only I had someone else who could hand-peel my hazelnuts for me” he laughed.

The two of them are both in their mid-thirties and the guy who'd joined our conversation already has three children. They're totally the kind of dads who are always in the kitchen making tasty treats for their kids.

In this country, it's not rare for men to cook and barbecuing is most definitely a man's job. Still, it's not often that you find men that bake cakes. Consequently, if a man says “Should we make a lemon cake together tomorrow?” his stock quickly goes up two or threefold. A man who can really cook - that’s the dream!

In the English movie Bridget Jones’ Diary, there’s a scene where she’s trying to cook. She’s screwing it up entirely and this guy she has over comes into the kitchen, takes off his suit jacket, rolls up the sleeves of his white button down shirt and whips up some omelettes – that is just so hot.

On the topic of England, I have to talk about Jamie Oliver. People say he’s the chef that’s been changing people’s ideas about “horrible English food”. Now, if you watch him cook, you somehow just want to cook more than anything else in the whole world. He doesn’t use measuring cups or spoons – he uses a splash of this, a pinch of that, a dash of this and a handful of that. The way he mixes and squeezes things with his bare hands and runs them all through and all over his food is intensely sensual and his effortless way of cooking always looks simple, liberating and fun.

Mixing things together, kneading, making things into balls... Cooking is just like playing in the mud when you’re a kid. That would mean everyone would have loved helping out in the kitchen as a kid, right? But, we get robbed of our precious creativity amid being hurried about and being put down:  “You're crap at cooking!”  “This tastes pretty bad…”  “You can't do it that way!” or even something as harsh as “What's a boy doing in the kitchen?”

Then on TV you see these top chefs yelling their heads off at novices and you have these people competing under tremendous pressure. But no matter how high quality the food made by these aggro chefs is supposed to be, I don’t want even one bite – the most delicious food is, of course, slow food made with pleasure.

Just like how mass produced, processed food can never match up to something that’s been made entirely from scratch, there’s nothing that tastes anywhere near as beautiful as something someone else has made for you and really put their heart into, no matter how simple it might be.

Even when I try going to fancy restaurants because people have told me “The food there is divine!” I usually end up thinking it’s nowhere near as good as the stuff made by my family or my close friends. It’s probably because I know they enjoy cooking food, they make it with love and they put their heart and soul into it.

At my daughter’s party, our homemade cakes flew off the table leaving just empty plates and crumbs. The guy’s chocolate cake had sunk a little in the middle and mine was similarly amateurish – it had zigzag bumps all around it from the baking sheet I’d used. Nevertheless, the proof is in the pudding!

A cake which someone’s put their heart and soul into – what greater gift can there be than that?

 [You can find the original post in Japanese ｢ケーキを焼く男たち」 here.]

Power of Will

My grandson's five months old. He can now lie on his front and prop himself up on his arms. He can keep his head up for a long time, gazing curiously at the world about him. He kicks his legs out with a lot of force, but ends up kicking the air since his feet are pointing up. But he sometimes manages to put huge amounts of power into his knees and move forward a tiny bit. In order to do this, he has to keep his body level so he ends up putting his face straight down into his playmat. For a second he sees nothing and there's a risk that he won't be able to breathe, but nevertheless he does it over and over again just to move that little bit forward.

He's quite a zen baby. He sleeps peacefully and hardly ever makes a fuss, but, according to his mother he is a strong-willed baby. Even though he was only born a matter of months ago, he is full of energy, always wanting to do things: he'll turn himself to face things he wants to look at, he’ll reach out his hands towards everything he wants to taste, and he makes funny little voices and sounds to communicate with us.

Babies are born with a tremendously strong will and a natural curiosity. Along with their physical abilities, they come into this world fully blessed with everything that is necessary for their development. So, saying things like “giving them drive” and “making them have a sense of curiosity” is kind of strange. It's as if will and curiosity are things you have to find somewhere and bestow upon them.

Not long after moving to this country, my family was invited to dinner at the home of a Steiner school friend. She was right in the middle of preparing dinner when we arrived on her doorstep. Her two year old son, who had up till then been playing by himself on the floor, said “Mama” and lifted up his arms. His mother then popped him up onto the kitchen bench, said to him “Put some flour on this meat here”, and then proceeded to fry some meat in a pot filled with boiling hot oil. Her son had a field day helping flour the meat, all the while getting his hands and face covered in white. Right within reach there was a huge kitchen knife...

Witnessing such a sight – one I wouldn't have seen in a million years in my family – I was struck anew with a feeling of “I've certainly come to one hell of a country”. If you were raised by such courageous and accommodating parents, I bet you could get to do all sorts of fun things.

I do admit this is an extreme example and I’m not saying that everyone has to be like my brave friend. But adults do stop children from doing the things they want to do for any number of reasons: it's dangerous, it'll be a pain to clean up afterwards, we don't have the time...Some people sincerely believe that children are wilful or that it's the parents’ responsibility to decide what children should do. These parents desperately keep their children's will in check. Either way, children who are not allowed to do the things they want to do begin losing their inherent will.

For most kids, the time comes for you to sit your high school exams and your parents all of a sudden come at you asking “why are you so unmotivated?!” what are you supposed to do? You have absolutely no idea why you can't just summon motivation of your own accord. The reason why you only shrug whenever you get badgered with the question “Isn't there anything you want to do in life?” is probably because your potential was quashed so long ago.

According to Rudolph Steiner, because a person's will develops in their first seven years, you shouldn't make them do mental activities during that time. To really cultivate the will that they're inherently born with, the best thing is for them to come into contact with beautiful things in a safe, relaxed environment and to sing, dance, draw pictures, listen to stories, play with flowers and animals, whatever. It's about becoming one with nature, moving around and simply playing. If, during this period, you don't let children do what they want and instead get them to do things like Gifted Education, they'll end up as a teenager who knows a lot of facts but is weak-willed and doesn't know what they themselves want to do.

Now, you might come back at me with “No way! Thanks to Gifted Education my kid's on their way to Tokyo University and has tonnes of motivation”, but God only knows whether getting into Tokyo University is something that high school kid actually wants for themself.

People think adults know and understand far more than their children, but I don’t really think that is the case. Their bodies may be small and they may be low on facts but kids know a great deal. Young children may not be able to explain things in words, but they have incredible intuition and know themselves best of all.

So, to cultivate those precious things our children are born with, they do need our support. Let's not crush the things they're born with. Let’s stop beating them down. Let's not let them lose what they already have.

We should stop stuffing them full of external knowledge and information. If we try cramming all of that stuff in, we're not nurturing their precious innate will and curiosity. When they need knowledge and information, they’ll be able to get it in no time.

Rather than going to work on our children, we should be working on ourselves, cultivating the courage to let go, increasing our power to trust that things will turn out alright and making sure that we have plenty of time and room in our lives for our children.

 

Today, my grandson continues to inch forward with all his might.

[You can find the original post in Japanese 「意志の力」here.]