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.]

A fine line

The character 責 in the word 責任 (responsibility) is the one for 責める(to blame) and there is a tendency to equate責任を負う (to take responsibility) to 自分を責める(to blame oneself). But there's a fine line between the two. “Taking responsibility” means that when something happens, you see it through to the end and do everything that you can. But what happened might not necessarily be your fault and there would be no need to blame yourself for it.

Let’s say that you've arranged a meeting and, on the day, you receive a notice that now you can't use the space that you were planning to use. As the person in charge, you have to sort out somewhere else to meet. So, you draw on all of your resources and look for a replacement location. But it's too last minute, a suitable meeting place can't be found and you end up with some tiny room that a little bit out of the way. On top of that, you only manage to notify people about the change two hours before the meeting...

When you’re in that kind of situation, how are you going to feel?

When this kind of thing happens, there are two types of people. There are people who will do everything they can about it but are completely unaffected emotionally and for whom it's like water off a duck's back. Then there are people who get completely thrown by unexpected circumstances and get caught up in thinking that everything's their responsibility and end up in total utter distress.

The other people involved in the meeting will probably naturally say things like “this place is a bit of a walk from the station” or “can we even fit everyone in here?” and chances are there will be people who show up late and people who don't even show up at all.

The second type of person reacts to every little thing that other people say and somehow feel that they can't face the people who turn up late. Now, the first type of person takes responsibility, but clearly understands that what has happened isn't their fault, and so isn't in the least bit fazed. They'll acknowledge how badly they have inconvenienced everyone and empathise with them for that, but they won't think that it's “their fault” and they won't blame themselves for it.

This is where the fine line is.

In Japan, there's a beautiful culture of “apologising for everything”. But there seem to be a lot of people who blame themselves excessively as a result.

Let’s say you introduce two of your friends to each other and they get married. But, some years later, they end up breaking up because of a “personality clash”. Would you then get to thinking that the divorce was somehow caused by you bringing together two people who would otherwise have never met? If so, you might be “someone who blames themselves excessively”. Yes, you're the one that introduced them, but as far as getting to the point of deciding to get married, that's the two of them. What happens after they get together is up to them.

Now, for those who would confidently say “Too right!”, would you be as confident when it comes to your children? There might be times when a kid's school results start dropping or they have a fight with their friends or they're out till the early hours bar hopping, and whenever these sorts of things happen, you might find yourself subconsciously questioning yourself thinking “Oh, if only I'd been home more” or “I spoiled them too much” and you’ll end up blaming yourself.

People who question themselves and blame themselves are not only never criticized for doing so, but are even praised for it. So, they get stuck into thinking that it's the right thing to do and for a lot of them, it just becomes a matter of course. But constantly blaming oneself like that makes the little “me” inside each of us absolutely desolate at being continuously told off. Being praised will bring up anyone's self-esteem, but having nothing but being brought down and told off will make it rapidly disappear.

So the next time you automatically think “this is all my fault” or even “my bad”, maybe you should try ascertaining whether or not it really was. Everybody does stupid things or forgets things that are important or causes problems through some misunderstanding. But, if it wasn't intentional, and you're now doing everything you can to make it right, then really, that’s the best you can do, right? We don't have to tell ourselves off or talk smack about ourselves any more. Instead, we can try accepting that “there's nothing I can do about it – what's done is done” and go easy on ourselves.

There's a world of difference between not blaming yourself and being irresponsible. Try seeing the super fine line that's there and do yourself a favour: forgive yourself.

 [You can find the original article”紙一重（かみひとえ）" in Japanese here. It was posted in April 2012.]

Taking care of things

I was saying one time that my firewood was too long for my fireplace and a friend of mine brought a chainsaw over to cut it up for me. He did an amazing job in absolutely no time at all and when he was done he asked me, seemingly not yet had his fill, “What else?” Since he was so kind as to offer, I got him to cut down two dead trees that had been bothering me. He looked them over completely, from the topmost branches all the way down: his felling method was textbook. He effortlessly put the blade in at the right angle and applied the right amount of force without having to think about it and had judged everything perfectly.

Even though it had been cloudy up to that point, our good friend the sun had come out and I had worked up a bit of a sweat just snapping all of the twigs. Having cut everything down to fireplace size, my friend put down his tools and asked “Do you have a screwdriver and a spanner?” I went back into the house and one by one I opened up the drawers of my medicine chest where I keep such things. The drawers have the names of different medicinal plants written on them in kanji, so I should remember that kuzu has the screwdriver and that the spanner is in saiko and put them back there, but I still can't.

When I came back with the tools, my friend reset the now jammed blades on his saw with an experienced hand. He's probably been using that same old chainsaw for a long time, repairing it like this all the while. When I asked him about it, he said “I've been using it for around 20 years”. He's enjoyed doing DIY since he was a young man and has sunk a lot of money into it, buying good tools. “With good tools, you can keep fixing them and using them no matter how many years go by.”

I thought back to when I went to England for the first time. It was the early 80s and Japan was awash with things. I'd jumped to the conclusion that the lifestyle I had caught a glimpse of during a brief homestay in America was “the Western way of life” and was surprised when I saw the appliances the British were using: deafening, wailing vacuum cleaners with external bags, antique-looking irons that must have weighed three kilos, machines that were designed to push the wrinkles out of sheets with sheer elbow grease.

These British people just loved using their old appliances. Even though these machines were big and heavy and loud, they wouldn't throw them out. Their philosophy was that as long as you can fix it, you keep repairing it until it finally gives. Being British, my ex-husband was great at repairing bikes and washing machines....And that's how he got four broken toaster-ovens out of a rubbish dump in Roppongi, banged them back into good nick, lined them all up and had a Robata style barbecue party at his place.... It was in his roots. 

Now, at the time, I had been brainwashed into thinking that small, lightweight plastic products were the height of sophistication and it was a long time before I realised the profundity of this British, old-fashioned way of living.

In the old days, Japanese people all took care of their things. My 86 year old father is still a pro at fixing things. A vacuum cleaner that's short circuited after taking a tumble, a telephone receiver that's got water in it and you can't hear anything out of, a sluggish tape measure that won't wind back up properly – he can take anything apart and fix it right up. Up until last year he was the standing grounds manager for a high school baseball pitch and even there he would be telling the high school kids “Don't just throw things away” and teaching them how to fix things.

When did we start throwing things away willy-nilly? We can't just bury everything in the ground. We're digging ourselves into a hole burying our cellphones and computers and all these things that poison the Earth. The era of us replacing our old things without a care in the world even if they're not broken, buying up the newest model for no other reason than the fact that it's just come out, is at an end.

As we speak, my friend is oiling his chainsaw, polishing it up as good as new.

The dead tree I got him to cut down for me.

(Technically it's my neighbour's tree but I gave him some firewood in exchange for letting me chop it down).

[You can find the original article in Japanese 「モノを大切に」here. It was posted in July 2012.]