The Meditator, The Artist, The Warrior

Balancing our time between striving and thriving

Finding balance as a delicate life act. Reflections at Arashiyama Yusaitei, Kyoto.

"Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. 
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. 
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. 
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. 
Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.” 
— Tao Te Ching by Lao Zi (translated by Stephen Mitchell) 

We are almost halfway through 2024! While I have never touched sadness as deeply as I have this year, I have also never been happier. And my bucket list of things I want to do continues to grow.

But it’s so hard to just relax, do nothing, and let go. Especially for someone wearing multiple hats.

I have been asked a couple of times by others what do I do now that I am freed from work. Well, different responsibilities and non-work ambitions fill up the space and get prioritized.

These days, I have been walking more than 22,000 daily steps (26,000+ yesterday) in between school drop offs, pickups, groceries, running errands, kids’ activities. We don’t own a car so I walk everywhere even in this 30C+ heat, at times taking buses or trains.

I cook, I do the laundry, I meditate, I make tea, I clean the house, I started going to the gym, and I think a lot more. I try to slow down but there are so much more that I want to do. Still, I want to read more and with my kids, to pick up Japanese faster, to understand the local culture more intimately, to make more friends in the community.

Time goes fast and there really is not enough time in a day. Or, is it really?

Learning to enjoy cooking for the family

Prioritization

“Protect your time because it’s very precious. On your dying day, you will give everything, everything you have for another day. So the discount rate, the marginal value of that extra day just goes up as you get older.” - Naval Ravikant at the Tim Ferriss Show

Say no to good so you can say yes to great

If we think about different dimensions of wealth, time is often the neglected one amongst them. So is health. So are deep relationships. Time is, in fact, the unifying factor across different important areas in life.

I realize that prioritization is not just about the 20/80 Pareto Principle - where one focuses on the 20% big decisions with domino effect across 80% of other areas in our lives: Where we live, who we are with, what we do.

In our hyper dopamine culture, it gets increasingly complex to manage the daily decisions and opportunities that come our way. Our time here is limited and we can only lead 1 life (instead of multiple parallel lives). And in reality, the small stuff can be as important as the big things in life, if not more.

Among the many good ideas and good things to do that confront us, how do we get better by focusing and bringing to life on just a handful of great things?

I don’t have an answer to that just yet. Below are a few different models of tackling that question that I am currently inspired by:

• Those who completely step out of the game, who don’t play the game, and rise above it. I am starting to explore this in both Eastern (think Lin Yu Tang and Taoism) and Western traditions (think Marcus Aurelius, former Roman Emperor).

• Balancing 3 energies. Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us to touch the meditator, the artists, and the warrior in us. Our present society highly prioritizes the latter so there is a need to tip the balance in favor of the first two (And yes, it is possible to enjoy time with my children even in the midst of climate change. Challenge the system but don’t sacrifice the wonder that is now happening all around us).

• Careful examination of our consciousness through meditation. On how we can reshape the experience of what happens to us: either by reacting, reflecting, or transforming a situation (think Vipassana, one of India’s most ancient meditation technique).

Slowness Revolution and Living

For me, what works in the cultivation of the meditator and artist is this concept of slow living - with growing interest in the West as well as revival of Eastern thinking.

Doing, tackling, enjoying the process of one chosen action at a time.

Time is a human conceptualization. Pair time with digital technology and time burns fast exponentially. This year, I am drawn to ancient timeless technologies that generations have relied upon - meditation, spirituality, prayers, rituals, cultural arts and crafts, nature and tuning into the seasons - and its power to increase our sense of time.

It is the idea of clearing our schedules to deep dive on some of the most mysterious places of what may have been and what could be.

It is the idea that the quality of our journey is more important than fleeting elated moments that we so chase.

It is the idea of relying on internal validation, self-defined success built in private, intrinsically rewarded individual growth.

Enjoying the Journey

“When we stop trying to manage our experience and let go, the world comes to us in all its richness. We do not see because we move too fast. We skim through the world. We are ambitious and we are distracted by a million things.” - John Einarsen, Founding Editor of Kyoto Journal

Kids live in this very moment. The journey is where the joy is. The destination, really, just an afterthought.

• At the river, my child was frolicking at Kamogawa the other day, drumming the waters, clearly enjoying herself. She was not looking for a friend though unexpectedly she was joined in by another child. While not seeking, she ended up making a new friend, playing together for much of the whole afternoon.

• At a garden, we were expecting rain drizzles so had our umbrellas ready. We ended up having lots of fun collecting dried leaves on the open back-ends of our umbrellas. We did not seek out to do anything but unexpectedly, my kids made a short video out of the experience.

As adults, there’s much inspiration to take in from our kids. To nurture ourselves to be lighter on our feet, enjoy the experience itself, rather than the dopamine chase for the fruits of our experiences.

Raining leaves. An unexpected by-product of having fun in the nature. My kids ended up creating this short-form video.

Collecting leaves, rock pebbles, pine cones. Time in nature with the little ones.

Enjoying the journey is a way to expand and refresh our emotional palette.

And so, I have been leaning into the journey, meditating on this question by Loch Kelly, psychotherapy and meditation teacher: “What is here now when there is no problem to solve?”

I actually started drafting this post on a somewhat different topic and tempo. But decided to lean into surprises and see where this post takes me.

Now, I’m rewarded by more than one possible posts (saving that earlier draft for a future post) from this surprised tangent. And I love a good surprise!

Books and teas: Me enjoying vintage book binding and making teas

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