tokyoliving123

Experiencing the world with another piece of the veil lifted. It is just a little clearer on both the inside and out. I wonder if that is really what life is all about. Slowly lifting the veil one layer at a time. Then right before you die the whole thing is lifted. And as long as you’ve done the work and what has been asked of you all you see is emanating light and love and the memories of a life well lived.

Like a movie screen in your mind's eye you get to enjoy all those moments of life before passing on to wherever it is that one passes on to, if that is indeed what really happens. I don't know for sure, it is all part of the mystery of life, and if anyone says differently they are lying.

Leaving your mark on the people around you with whatever you have done, be it raising a family, creating some form of art, volunteering, we all have our ways of giving to the world around us.

All I know is it is clearer than it ever has been and for that I am grateful for this experience right now. The catch is to be careful thinking I know other's truths or that what I see is 100% correct, when it may or may not be.

I have learned from living in Japan for so many years that clarity means knowing when to speak or not. It can become problematic as I have spoken to others too soon and are not ready to hear. Or simply it doesn’t pertain to them at the time.

I think I have written about this in a previous writing, but this is a less than genteel approach to this topic. Maybe more like a complaint really.

There is an inoridant amount of people who are just plain “asleep at the wheel.” Not literally, rather they go about their day in a habitual manner not paying attention to anything except whatever it is that is propelling them forward in their mind. I know, I was once guilty of this. I am now less guilty and with that comes a cost, which is I now notice people who are not paying attention and it irks me. I have reached a point where rather than let it boil over I now have a running joke with myself in my head.

This diverison from boiliing over to a joke mostly manifests on my bike. Why? I am at risk of falling off and re-injuring my mending collarbone due to someone being asleep at the wheel be it a car or any other moving thing for that matter.

The joke goes like this, once hitting the road to ride, how long will it take for me to reach my quota of 3 f$%k yous? The other day I surpassed it with 5. Often it is within half the distance of a bike ride that I hit the quota.

Now there is a chorus of words, which I will not say and reserved for that special someone. It's a quota of 1 for somebody who is both asleep at the wheel while riding a bike, looking at their smartphone and listening to music with earphones. This does not happen on many occasions, but when it does it's a symphony of foul language never before experienced in Japan. The reaction is usually deadpan, mostly due to the fact that they are unable to hear me because of the earphones. It's alright, I feel better afterward for just having expressed myself.

While this is an aging society it is a shame because many of those asleep are the elderly. They kind of get a pass as I mutter it under my breath to them. The elderly are revered in Japan, andd they take advantage of it in many cases including while riding their bikes. I call it a passive Japanese form of entitlement. I am old, I am revered hear me roar. No wait, I am old, I am revered, make way!

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The path we walk while wide early in life tends to narrow as we age. This is not to imply it is a bad thing. I do believe it narrows because we find what we are meant to do. Or just our lot in life depending upon how one approaches it.

It could be for some like a bobber at sea bopped around flitting from one job to another eventually landing on a job that pays the bills despite something you hate doing. Or you can be engaged in life making conscious choices trying and changing until what was a wide path narrows as you become more the person you are meant to be creating the the life you want to live.

This is where I see the narrow path benefiting our lives. I would add that there is also a further narrowing by heeding the calling you are meant to be doing. This is not an easy one to walk on, but in the end as you walk it, there comes a place and time where it widens to an ever expansiveness never before experienced in your lifetime. A world of freedom and possibilities. A world of participation, service and love.

A recent revelation is “no big deal” in the sense that I do not have to make a big deal out anything if I choose not to. Just be aware, acknowledge, and move on.

I used to make a big deal out of just about anything, whether someone cutting me off on the road while driving, to getting overcharged something at a store. When in reality these kinds of things happen to people all the time. So it is in this spirit that I acknowledge that living a life of practice, meditation, mindfulness whatever you would like to call has made even epiphanies not that big of a deal any longer.

One such recent realization came to me while listening to a podcast about lying, any type of lying big lies to white lies. Since that time I have pledged to myself to no longer lie and to be mindful when the lie arises. Once making such a pledge to oneself you can hear and feel the truth all over the place. I see it even in TV shows. After Life was such a brilliant, comedically heartfelt show. Ricky Gervais has a big inclusive heart that is amazing. You can feel it emanating off the screen. I also feel it in others writings, art and people around me.

I like this phrase “being a good person doesn’t mean you have to put up with the bad,” and believe this to be true. I am finding myself less inclined to read the news, get caught up in the self created drama of the world, because people choose not to live a good life. Strike that. Not most people, there is a growing swath of people who are not living a good life and affecting the many. And that is sad.

I hold out hope for Japan for the long run. But even here it is getting a bit difficult. You can see it in people. Their daily slog taking its toll. Dead inside or rather dying inside with each passing moment focusing on the externals of work, drinking, gambling, numbing anything to the reality of life.

It was a beautiful crisp clear sunny fall day here in Tokyo. I wanted to read and write outside so I escaped from the confining condo to a nearby coffee shop.

I am currently reading and really enjoying the style of David Sedaris’ humor. If you do not and I highly recommend it. It is what I like to call laugh out loud milk out of your nose hilarity. Simple vignettes about every day life.

I like that, simple everyday observations. Let’s try one now. Sitting at the coffee shop reading my book I suddenly hear a low pitched moan resembling a yawn. Looking up I see the “barista” still not sure why they are called something special like that. The image of a barista to me is one with a crisp white button down shirt, black vest and matching black pants. Not a tattooed from head to toe, purple hair, colored khaki wearing one. Am I old, yes, passing judgment yes.

If I am going to pay these exorbitant barista prices I expect my barista to be impeccably dressed. On top of that I do not want my barista to yawn, which is what I heard when I looked up from my book. There she was yawning the biggest yawn allowing me to get a glimpse of what I thought to be her big intestines. I was never good at anatomy so it could have been the small ones.

“Who works in a coffees shop and yawns,” I thought to myself. Surrounded by coffee drinks, beans and smells penetrating every orifice staving one must be constantly on a coffee high fending off fatigue and certainly a yawn. Well this barista must have had a humdinger of an evening the night before to be yawning midday.

Writing about yawning and the fact that it is midday has just caused me to yawn. I am allowed to yawn being a customer. It is the reason why I am here, to minimize yawning. But I am old and no matter I drink a gallon of the new fangled high octane nitro coffee that is all the rage these days I am both entitled and will yawn. And so I do.

Having a coffee cup on the left side of the desk to reach for is something I have had to adjust to lately. This is thanks to a broken collarbone I sustained while mountain biking in Montana over the summer. It has been two months and still it is painful using my right hand to bring a heavy cup of coffee to my lips for a drink.

I do not want the pain to impact the experience of drinking coffee so now I have switched to using my left hand because I want it to be a smooth painless experience as I write. It is that little adjustment that changes the experience. It is like life, adding that little extra piece that either limits or enhances our experience of life. Not adding extra things tend to be smoother and just flow.

Before writing this last sentence I did an impromptu experiment and took a sip of coffee one from each hand. And just as I hypothesized the left hand experience was smoother. Not by much, but enough to minimize the flow of my writing once I put the cup down.

Now just think of that on moment to moment basis all day long and the ways in which we get in our way to lessen our experience by throwing off the flow. It happens all the time without even noticing it. I am guilty of it on occasion.

Sometimes getting in the way can be our thoughts and letting them take us away as we attach an emotion to it and before you know it, like a child letting go of a balloon, the emotion and story and all those colors of emotion we are taken away, lost.

I think nature is where we can learn how not to add that little extra and hold on. Nature does not hold on, it lets go. Be it leaves in the autumn as they turn the beautiful colors we know and love to see only to turn brown drop off and die. Trees don't hold on.

Growing up I was very sensitive. I used to take things so personally. In hindsight I had a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve. Anything bad that was said about me whether in gest or for real I nearly always took it to heart. It took a long time to realize that being sensitive is a good trait.

Afther that realiziation for decades I was fond of saying that it has been about separating the head and the heart. The head is my intellect and I can justify anything I want. The heart is where the truth lies

While this may have been my mantra and objective to achieve separation and to be able to discern the difference, I am now beginning to realize that it is time to let them come together.

It could be that the heart / head separation was really first half of life speak, whereas melding is the second half of life, post mid-life to put in another way.

I am reminded of this by a podcast I recently listened to by Sam Harris and oddly enough he was interviewing his wife. The main focus was being conscious, free will and the self. I find it interesting to make this connection from those three to the idea of melding. The connection didn’t come in the topics themselves, rather from the two of them talking to one another.

Here are two very intelligent people with a spiritual practice of mindfulness meditation talking both intellectually and from the heart. Clearly a melding of the two. Why? Because I can hear it both in their voices while they are talking about intellectual topics as being spiritual.

I get a lot of them, insights that is. They come anytime during the day when I least expect it. They come during conversations I have with people. Accessing this gift of insight coupled with intuition, I really listen.

While I like to think I am a good listener it has been living in Japan where I have really learned how to. In Japan, typically people listen before speaking rather than the american style of cutting people off. When someone cuts you off you immediately realize the other person is not listening because they are already thinking of what they want to say right before interrupting.

While I am good at doing it and on occasion I will interrupt, especially with my American friends, generally I just listen first and then speak. I prefer this because this is when the so-called magic occurs. Listening to the words taking in what and how they are speaking, you can then access insights and intuition and respond just how life is asking to respond. This is for the most part a conscious level but some of the deeper things that are intuitive arise from a deeper place.

Full of energy and vigor for life. Cruising along the path not knowing exactly where it takes me with each passing moment, with each letter registering on the screen as my fingers dance across the keyboard creating a word, then a sentence, perhaps an image or even something thought provoking. I wait with patience for the word to arise. Sometimes it comes in a flash other times I have to wait. I find that in order to cruise along I have to wait for the words to arise. I cannot push it and make it happen. When I do let it happen it can often be powerful.

It is amazing the power of words.

Back to the path.

Not knowing, but going, trusting.

Is this it? I ask myself, and the answer comes quickly. It is. This is all there is now, now and now. Everything else is past or future. And yet we must walk the path of not knowing with a life full of energy and focus and a calling to do the will.

I can begin to see why people who are awake to the moment often have a sense of heaviness or burden. It is an odd combination of lightness for life and the responsibility for a calling. One that comes with effort and continual staying awake and deepening to the words and actions one is being called to do.

One of a few mantras I say every morning. The key is to live by them not just say them. Today I want to remind myself of this one – easy does it and do it. What does this mean to me? While I like to generally push myself in nearly every endeavour take on, it is time as I have reached middle age to back it off, take it easy and go for sustainabilty. That is to pace myself.

To pace is to know when to go full throttle and when to take it easy. To not over-schedule my life. To take it easy is to feel the ground when taking steps wherever it is I may be going. Easy does it and do it is to be present as often as possible in my life during the day. Take it easy means to be easy on myself, and when I do something really do it. Not half-assed or halfheartedly, but with my whole heart and mind. To observe and witness this life we live. And noticing the good things we have. By not taking it easy it becomes more difficult to notice them.

Stopping to take a drink of water I look up and see my bright orange gravel bike parked just outside the coffee shop window where I am writing this. A thought occurs to me, “What a life. I am living the life I have wanted to live. A bike ride in the morning then off to a coffee to write and have a cup of coffee.”