lifestyle

Lifestyles of the Old and Crusty

Yesterday, I rode my bike in an event called The Kasama Century Run.  It involved 100 miles of riding around the area of Kasama in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan.  That is the primary reason that they call it a century run.  However riding through the countryside, made me think of the other use of the word century. 

The whole ride was like travelling through time.  Going from high tech glass and steel buildings to thatched roof, mud rendered houses.  From the bustling city out into the lonely rice fields.  I saw old men and women, perhaps 90 or 100 years old, farming their crops by hand, bent over in a pose that had been well rehearsed over decades of working the same patch of soil.  In fact it was probably the same patch of soil that their parents had worked before them.  

Some of these people spend their whole lives on their farms.  They know every inch of the ground and every tree and rock that it includes.  Their life is a simple rhythmic one of plowing, sowing, cultivating and harvesting.  Season after season, the rice is grown, the nashi is grown, the daikon is grown and then another season begins.  

From my perspective it all seems quite strange.  I am a man living in the city, with a vegetable garden as big as my bed, an obsession with progress and a list of goals and objectives.  I find it hard to imagine getting fulfillment from living the same years over and over for a whole long lifetime.  How can it be good to spend your years not progressing.  Aren’t these people missing out on something?  But perhaps I am thinking about this the wrong way?

The only reason to progress is if you have the urge.  There are plenty of people, and there always have been, who are content to live out their life in stability.  Stability is one thing that the person who pursues self development seldom experiences.  People who actively pursue their goals are continually on the move and rarely rest on their laurels for long enough to experience stability.  They are always on the edge of performance, sometimes pushing obsession, sometimes even falling for addiction.  They don’t have the time for boredom or entropy.  This is the positive side of self development.

The negative side, is a constant feeling of itch.  We can feel totally satisfied and enriched by a day, yet we feel this yearning for what comes next.  It is like we are so intent on maintaining our momentum that we never give our selves the opportunity to just enjoy life.  Our hundred year old farmers would find that very hard to value.

All this goes to show that my way of life is no more correct than yours, or the ancient farmers that I watched.  My choices and aspirations are no more valid or universal than anyone else’s.  That is why I never try to force my ideas on anyone.  It would be pointless.  Unless someone is looking for tools and inspiration, they will look at my life, look at this site and look at what it takes to succeed and just laugh. 

I am imagining, that if you are reading this article, you have some desire to maximize the amount of life that you get from your life.  I would guess that you have a degree of dissatisfaction and itch that gives you motivation to move forwards.  Don’t fall for the mistake of believing that these feelings are common to all people.  If you surveyed 100 people, only a handful would show an interest in your ideas of progress, and out of them only 1 or 2 would have the commitment to make it work for them.  These people are likely to be on a similar journey to you, experiencing similar triumphs and defeats.  They may well be using similar techniques and tools and reading similar resources.  All of this will be written in a language foreign to the rest of the world.  It would be incomprehensible to them. 

While I don’t understand a life of stability, that doesn’t matter.  There are many more people out there who don’t understand my life.  Who am I to judge their priorities.  Everyone has his or her own life to lead.  My life is my deliberate choice, how about yours?

Thanks

Tom