When do you find yourself most happy?
When I’m watching beautiful flowers.
When I’m creating Ikebana arrangements.
When I’m writing.
When I’m gardening.
When I’m serving tea.
When I’m cooking…
When I’m so immersed in whatever I’m doing, I forget time passing by. I forget about myself. And that’s when I feel most happy.
When I’m thinking about myself, worrying about myself, happiness never visits me.
Life is full of paradox.
Photo by Author Akemi Sagawa
It was the summer of 1991. I flew from Tokyo to make a presentation to the group at the headquarters. My very first business trip to Seattle. Alone.
The presentation was over. Relieved, I took advantage of the half a day left for me in Seattle to do some sightseeing. Destination? Where else? Pike Place Market!
There were quite a few people on the street, but nobody I knew. Every building, every store was new to me! I walked along, thoroughly enjoying my solitude.
The sun was warm and bright. I walked up the little park next to the market, then was taken by the big, vast blue! The blue sky, and the blue sea, separated by the white snowcap of the mountains.
“How wonderful would it be if I could see this view every weekend!” Looking at the woman walking a dog in the park, I felt so envious of her. How lucky she is! She must live here.
I was young then. And ambitious. But moving to Seattle to live was only a faraway dream.
Last week I visited Pike Place Market alone. The market had been renovated here and there, but the main structure is kept mostly the same. I walked up to the newly-added open sitting area with benches facing Puget Sound.
The same huge blue. The horizontal stripe of blue, white, and blue. The view that I now feel almost at home. I’m not as young, not as optimistic, but looking at this huge blue still brings back my memory of seeing it for the first time thirty-some years ago.
I just wonder why there are negative connotations with the word “blue”. Blue color should be treated more fondly, in my humble opinion.
This tiny garden is my oasis. Every morning I look out from the window of my den. I wonder how many clouds are hanging in the sky, if any bird is resting on the maple tree, or which branch of the Buddha’s yew is turning brown.
This Tsubo-niwa (坪庭, a Japanese word for a tiny garden), is my own creation.
It used to be a boring yard with lawn with no hedge to hide from the street. I seldom spent time looking at it when working 9 to 5, so I wondered why I had to have someone come and mow every so often in the summer.
My days of going to work every day were over. I turned the also tiny den facing the yard into my tea room/ home office/ Ikebana studio. Sitting in the den, looking out in the window, got tired of the dull green grass, I ask myself, “Am I going to keep paying for mowing this unappreciated lawn forever? For what?”
So I ripped off the lawn one day.
I went to several places hunting for gravel, found the one I liked, and got 60 bags of gravel.
I lined up concrete blocks on the borderline with our neighbor’s property so that the gravel won’t run over our neighbor’s front yard.
On the naked ground, I spread weed barrier fabric. I placed stepping stones creating a path to meander around.
On top of the fabric I spread gravel. 56 bags of them. I smoothed them out.
I worked on the yard for the whole week. Maybe longer than 9 to 5. Until I declared, “done!”
Now almost seven years later, the Buddha’s yew trees I planted on the hedge have grown almost as tall as I. The height of the trees is uneven, but what can I do? Each tree has its own pace to grow. I will wait patiently till they grow tall and wide enough to trim evenly.
The ground cover that I planted, hoping to imitate the moss of the moss garden in Kyoto, never covers the entire surface I wish it to. But I refuse to add any synthetic fertilizer. The only fertilizer is the fallen leaves and weeds I pluck out of the ground.
There is never a moment that the garden looks “perfect”. Always some fraud. Some branches of the yew look brown. Some strange shoots are sprouting on the ground. Some birds might have brought the seeds with their droppings.
This tiny, ever-changing Tsubo-newa, is my favorite nature where I live.
Photo by Szilvia Basso on Unsplash
For years I kept pursuing happiness. If I get good grades will I become happy? If I get a good job will I become happy? If I get promoted? If I get married? If I own my business? If I get rich?
The moment I achieved my goal, it was not happiness but emptiness that crept on me.
“Today we are seeking happiness so vigorously that the very life of the planet is being threatened. All those people, who depend on external situations to be happy, will never know true joy in their lives.
Sadhguru
The quote above hit me hard. It had me redefine happiness 180 degrees.
Happiness is not to be pursued, but to be realized. Ever since I encountered the quote above, Every morning, I tell myself to be happy. I might face a tough negotiation that day. The stock market might have crashed the day before. I might have lost a person who is dear to me.
Regardless of the outside situations, I start the day with happiness in me. At least I try every morning, to remind myself that happiness is not a goal but the foundation of life.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
Fruits! I grew up with lots of fruits all year round!
Bright red strawberries in the spring were sour and I used to sprinkle sugar. Nowadays, most strawberries are so sweet that no sugar is needed. I guess the process of selective breeding has advanced so much in the last half a century.
Summer started with seedless grapes. Delaware cultivar was the most common. Did you know that people in Japan don’t eat the skin of grapes? And watermelons – my favorite! I could eat watermelons for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Late summer to fall was fig season, although I didn’t care for it much… My tongue just doesn’t accept that texture. Persimmons followed figs. Our Pomeranian dog liked persimmons better than anyone else in our family. She could not stay still while my mother was pealing the skin.
Then apples and oranges in winter. My hands would turn orange by peeling the skins of so many oranges.
In our family, it was not my mother but my father who brought fruits home. Only four of us were in our family, my father, my mother, my younger brother, and me. But my father would always buy fruits in a whole box from the wholesaler. In a box, at least three dozen of apples were neatly lined up and stacked. We tried to eat them all before they went bad, or simply gave some away to neighbors.
When my father was not at home, I asked my mother why he was so wasteful. Granted that wholesale price was better than retail, but if he bought only as much as we could consume comfortably, we would appreciate the taste much better rather than shoveling in.
Then my mother started.
“When your younger brother was born, your father didn’t look excited but rather worried. I asked him what was the matter, why he didn’t look as happy as when you were born.”
“Your father was afraid that now he has two children, those children would have to share one apple half. You know, your father had eight siblings. He never had an opportunity to eat the whole apple, but only one-eighth. Before your brother was born you used to have the whole apple. Your father was afraid he could only give you half from now on.”
My father was 6 years old when World War II ended. He grew up poor, not having enough even to eat.
Fortunately, my father could afford to buy a whole apple each for me and for my brother. And more. Maybe his urge to buy a whole box of fruits was a defensive reaction to his childhood trauma.
After my mother told me this story, I stopped criticizing my father as being wasteful. I simply thanked him for getting us abundant fruits.
Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash
When I started reading Medium regularly last fall, I was only sarching topics that I was more familiar with. Keywords I entered in the search field were “Japan,” “inspiration,” and “environment.” I encountered many interesting articles and authors.
Medium sent me email messages full of more articles. Its recommendations were based on articles I read or topics I followed.
After a while, however, I found myself reading similar content from mostly the same authors. It was easy to reinforce what I believe in, but I was not learning new things.
That’s the danger and limitation of not only Medium but any kind of online media, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon. Their recommendations spitted out by their algorithm are based only on my past behavior. There is no surprise.
How can I replicate a similar experience as I would have in a huge bookstore? How can I encounter a totally new author, topic, or title, and end up selecting a book that I had never thought of?
With Medium, I implement two things.
First, I type some words I never typed before. I’ve never been to Latin America or Africa before, so I type those words. There are so many articles about such topics, and some writers are well-known as experts on these topics.
Second, I gauge my reading time. If the content is so new to me, it takes longer to read than what Medium indicates. My signal is if it takes longer to read, I’m learning something new.
I’m surprised to find out that I enjoy reading poetry, especially English Haiku and Tanka. A genre that I never would have thought I would ever be interested. Now I follow one of the publications of Tanka.
Change the topics to follow once in a while, type in some new keywords, and consciously stick to reading articles that take me longer to read… In order to expand my horizon of curiosities, I’m trying these things when reading Medium.
What is your practice to find new surprises in Medium articles?
Photo by Gabi Miranda on Unsplash
The Northwest Flower & Garden Festival was full of garden and plant lovers. Located just an aisle away from the main stage, our Ikebana International Seattle Chapter 19 booth was attracting many visitors.
“How beautiful!” “Oh, I want to learn Ikebana myself, too!” Such words always fuel us volunteers with more passion to serve those visitors with creative flower arrangements to be displayed at the booth.
I was assigned to be sitting at the booth as a host from 6 to 8 pm. Since I got a one-day ticket, I went to Seattle Convention Center early afternoon, so I could walk through the entire event floor before my shift.
Dream gardens with waterfalls and rock patios, many house plants displays, rows of flower bulbs for sale… It was a challenge not to open my wallet compulsively whenever I encountered unique foliage and blossoms. (I bought a couple of bulbs of two types of lilies, Star Gazer and Casablanca.)
My highlight of the day, however, was that I learned about natural organic reduction, a fancy term for human composting.
A Seattle-based startup called Recompose had a small booth. They didn’t have any sample products to try or fancy-looking tropical plants on the booth. Instead, there was a simple circular diagram with a photo of the forest on the panel.
Next to the diagram, there was a US map with Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, and a couple of states on the east coast highlighted in green. Intrigued, I stopped by and started listening to the person at the booth talking.
According to the salesperson, these states have legalized human composting so far, and many more states are considering it.
The brochure of Recompose says, “For every person who chooses Recompose over conventional burial or cremation, one metric ton of carbon dioxide is prevented from entering the atmosphere.”
My body is nothing more than an accumulation of what I eat. After my death, my body returns to the soil as fertilizer. Not a bad idea.
I’m not ready to rewrite my will yet, but this encounter has ignited my interest in my “Ecological Death Care.”
Photo by Author Akemi Sagawa
I had a visitor from Japan last night. As a nice gesture to welcome the guest, I cut a branch from the camellia tree in my yard, made a simple arrangement, and placed it at the entrance.
For me, this short stem with vivid red flowers and thick leaves in shiny green represents nature, with no doubt. You can bring nature into your home. Being at home and enjoying nature at the same time has no contradiction in my mind.
In articles written by American or western writers, however, nature seems to be something different. In their articles, nature seems something you encounter or experience only when you drive away from the city and step into mountains or forests. If you find man-made structures around you, you don’t say you are with nature.
I learned at school that nature is an English translation of the Japanese word “自然shizen”. In my interpretation, the camellia branch I brought home is something of “自然.” However, maybe it’s not appropriate or it makes no sense to bring nature into a home?
Definitely some words, concepts, or expressions in one language has no direct translation into another. “生きがい ikigai” is one example. A simple concept the Japanese people take for granted, but a foreign one to the western culture. Some people made a thorough analysis of this word and created a whole training business out of this concept.
Does “自然shizen” also fall in this category? Maybe I should be careful not to simply translate it into nature in English?
Mt. Miwa – Photo by Author Akemi Sagawa
My mother visits Omiwa Shrine in Nara, Japan, every 1st day of the month. It takes about an hour by train and bus from where she lives. Rain or shine, she never fails to make a visit, and always brings back sacred water in bottles. She shares the water with my cousin and her family who live nearby.
Although Omiwa Shrine has an impressive building, the sacred object is not housed there. The sacred object of worship is Mt. Miwa, a mountain, or rather a large hill behind the building.
My mother told me that her mother (my grandmother) used to bow down to the rising sun every morning, praying that the day will be a good one for her and her family. My mother has a little shrine at home and bows to that shrine every morning as well.
Praying to the sun and worshiping the mountain… I grew up despising these behaviors of my mother and grandmother as superstitious and primitive. In today’s scientific, modern days, they are outdated.
When I went back to Japan several years ago, I decided to accompany my mother to visit the shrine. It was April 1st, and the cherry trees in the shrine property were in full bloom. When I looked up at Mt. Miwa through the pink clouds of the cherry blossoms, I felt awed.
The clothes that people wear, the vehicle they used to come here, and the buildings surrounding the mountain have all changed. But for centuries and centuries, the mountain has welcomed those who come to worship it.
Even with today’s advancement of science and technology, there are so many things that human beings don’t know at all. One scientist was saying in the interview that the more you research and study the more you realize how little the understanding is of us human beings.
Both my mother and grandmother realized that their existence is tiny compared with the sun, the mountain, or the whole existence in the universe. Their perception is not blinded by the arrogance of human beings.
What a fool was I to despise their behavior? Time for me to be humble…
Photo by RepentAnd SeekChristJesus on Unsplash
“Are you having enough vegetables?”
“Are you following the doctor’s instructions?”
“Don’t forget to go to the bank!”
“Be careful when crossing the street by bicycle.”
Those were my mother’s words I would often hear on the phone, when I started living alone, to go to college. Mother, I’m not a little girl anymore. Treat me as an adult, was my response. To my mother, however, I was still her daughter who needed her care.
Forty years later, living thousands of miles apart, my mother and I video chat almost every day.
Now it’s my mother’s turn to hear words like those stated above from me.
Mother, it sounds strange, but I’m kind of happy to be able to treat you like my child. Now I’m able to pay you back at least some of the abundant love you have given me.
Let me keep on treating you as if you were my daughter, the longer, the better…
