by Beth Kempton
When we opt to live at a pace that suits us, doing the best we can and accepting that is all we need to do, everything feels different. Each stage of life is a time for growth. We are always learning and changing, whether we actively participate in that or not. At any time, whether things are flowing or tough, we can ask ourselves questions such as:
• What can I learn here?
• How am I growing right now?
• What change can I see or feel, inside or out?
• What do I need to let go of to move into my next life stage?
• How can I better take care of myself right now?
This brings our attention back into the experience of our lives as they are happening, and helps us to ease ourselves into the next stage. And when we fully embrace life, at whatever age, that’s when our inner beauty shines through.
Finding joy in small things
Without exception, all the older people I spoke to in researching this book talked about the importance of finding beauty in everyday life. We can do this simply by slowing down and looking for things to appreciate: watering flowers, baking cakes, watching the sunset, counting the stars, reading a poem, taking a walk, making something. Even chores can be a meditation if we choose to make them so.
We can create rituals to bring us into the present. Before I sit down to write, I boil the kettle for tea, and ponder the Hamlet quote on my favourite mug: ‘To thine own self be true.’ This is my writing ritual. It reminds me that I am investing time in something that I care about. And it makes the tea taste better.
Small moments matter.
We can also be open to the unexpected. My memories of travels in Japan are punctuated with the kindness of strangers: the day I went cycling through the fields of Okayama and an old woman stopped me to offer a freshly harvested watermelon, so big it would only just fit in my basket; the government official who arranged my forest bathing session, and gave up his Saturday morning to chauffeur me to the woods; the countless times I have been lost, and people have accompanied me all the way to my destination. Each of these has brought joy, and every time I have tried to pay it forward, which brings another kind of joy, when you can help someone else.
Perfectly imperfect planning
Accepting that everything is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete is not an excuse to throw caution to the wind and avoid any kind of planning. For me, the opposite is true. Smart scheduling can help us prioritise what really matters, make more space in our lives for experiencing beauty and ensure we are making the most of our lives.
HOW TO PLAN FOR MORE
PERFECT MOMENTS
A well-lived life is a constant dance between dreaming and doing. The important thing here is not to obsess about perfect planning. You cannot know what is around the corner, so overplanning can lead to unnecessary stress when things change. It’s about making a few key decisions so you don’t lose your days to the whims of others.
Part A: the brain dump
You will need: sticky notes, several large sheets of paper and a pen.
1. Gather every single notebook/diary/list/note/reminder that is currently active as a way of reminding you to do things.
2. On several large sheets of paper, write a heading for each of the key areas of your life: Family, Work, Hobbies, Health, Friends, Finances, Home, etc.
3. Go through each of your to-do lists/reminders/diary/ notebooks in turn and write one item you need ‘to do’ on one sticky note, then stick it under the most relevant area. Repeat this for every single item on every single one of your to-do lists/reminders, writing down any and every task that requires time and attention from you. This may take a while.
4. When you’ve finished, make some notes about which areas of your life have the most ‘to-do’ items. What does that tell you? Are there any surprises?
Part B: the possibilities
Now imagine your life five years from now, at a point where you feel content and inspired. (We cannot know the timeline of any of our dreams, but this exercise can help make important decisions to take you in their direction.) Make notes using the following prompts:
• How old are you?
• Where are you living?
• What are you doing?
• What do you look forward to each day?
• When things are going really well, how do you feel?
• What are you grateful for?
Part C: the shift
In order to make that dream a possibility, change is inevitable. Use the questions below to help you identify what kind of changes might be involved:
• What needs to be different by this time next year in order for that dream to be even a remote possibility several years from now?
• How would you like to describe yourself a year from now?
• How would you like to describe your home a year from now?
• How would you like to describe your work life a year from now?
• How would you like to describe your finances a year from now?
• What would you like to have created a year from now?
Part D: the prioritizing
In my experience, the single-most important shift you can make to soulfully simplify your schedule is to think in terms of projects, not tasks. A project is something that has a defined beginning and end. An example might be ‘Career Change Project’, ‘Write My Book Project’ or ‘Wedding Project’. It is a way of focusing your attention on something that really matters to you. Choose a maximum of five projects that you want to bring to life in the next twelve months. You don’t have to start them all at the same time, and they can be spread over the twelve months.
Part E: the realignment
Now get five fresh pieces of paper, and write each of your projects as the heading this time. Go back to your sticky notes and reallocate them onto your project sheets. You may be shocked at how many sticky notes you have left unassigned, showing just how committed you are to things that have nothing to do with the life you want to be living.
Part F: a new way of planning
Make a plan to finish, delegate or forget about any of the to-do items that do not fit with your principal projects. For ongoing household chores and other such responsibilities, it can help to bundle them and then go through them all at once. For example, in my house we deal with all our household finances twice a month.
Then revise your weekly schedule to ensure that you are spending a significant amount of your time working on the projects that really matter to you. Instead of trying to squeeze your dreams in around the edges, diarise your projects first, and plan everything else around them. 9
Soulful simplicity in your finances
Every time we worry about money, expend energy feeling resentful about something we cannot afford or regret something we bought that we didn’t really need, we pull ourselves away from the here and now. Being anxious or distracted hampers our ability to feel wabi sabi , and experience beauty. It may seem an unlikely connection, but some degree of financial planning and money management can make a huge difference to how present we can be in our lives, and consequently how we make the most of them.
My first year in Japan was spent living with a homestay family. My homestay mother – Okāsan , as I called her – taught me everything about managing household finances. She had a part-time job comparing prices for supermarkets, before the days of price-comparison technology and online grocery shopping. She carried this savvy into her own household management, and had immaculate kakeibo (journals for household accounts), filled with columns of numbers. She was aware of every yen that came in and out of her house. In Japan, kakeibo have been popular for almost a century. These days, the top kakeibo app Zaim, invented by a woman named Takako Kansai on her commute to work, has over 7 million users.
I would often find Okāsan at the kitchen table, feeding chikuwa (processed fish sticks) to the dog with one hand, and flipping through the newspaper with the other, searching for money-off coupons. She never did more t
han a basket of shopping at a time, always waiting until the end of the day to get the bargains.
At the time, I was living on a very tight budget, as a student on the other side of the world from home. My room and board were covered, but the rest was up to me. At the beginning of each month, I would buy a batch of bus tickets for the rainy days when I couldn’t cycle to school, put a little aside for my exploration fund and then go to the bank for a pile of ¥100 coins. I would stack these up in piles of four and tape them together, one pile for each lunchtime. A coffee in a local kissaten (coffee shop) would set you back around ¥250, so ¥400 was not much of a budget for lunch. It would stretch to a bowl of rice and some soup, or a bag of raisin buns from the shop across from our classroom. Sometimes I’d sacrifice my lunch for a new pen or some cute stickers, Japanese stationery being a guilty pleasure of mine that remains to this day.
Mindful spending. Mindful saving. Mindful living.
What I learned from my Japanese Okāsan was the importance of clarity, priority and practice around finances. Keeping a kakeibo of my income and expenditure helped me understand what I had access to. I also kept notes of my savings, so I always knew where I was. I prioritised what mattered to me (getting to school, having adventures and lunch/stationery, mostly in that order). And then I made it a habit, checking in weekly. These are habits I have carried with me ever since, and I still keep my own version of a kakeibo to this day.
DECLUTTERING FINANCES
To declutter your finances in a soulfully simple way, ask yourself these questions:*
Clarity
• What exactly is coming in?
• What exactly is going out? Where is it going?
• What are your net assets? (In the broadest terms, this is the saleable value of everything significant you own, including savings and investments, minus everything you owe.) If you are in a long-term relationship, what is your shared position?
• Are there any places you have been spending money based on a vision of an elusive ‘perfect life’, which you no longer feel the need to chase?
• How do you feel about what you have discovered?
Whatever you discover, remember, you are where you are. Use your self-acceptance tools from Chapter 2 (see p. 26 ) to respond to any feelings of regret or anxiety that arise based on how you have been spending money. What matters is what you do next.
Priority
• What do you really value?
• What are you actively prioritising in the way you are using your money? Does this fit with what you value? If not, what do you need to change?
• Where are you spending money on things you don’t really care about? What’s stopping you from cutting out this expenditure altogether?
• How could you better use your money as a tool to invest in your current and future wellbeing and happiness?
Practice
• What do you need to change to make this happen?
• How can you make this part of your daily, weekly or monthly routine, so mindful spending and saving become a habit?
When you have true clarity around your financial situation, and make financial decisions and plans based on what really matters to you and your family, you can reduce or remove three major sources of stress:
• Future regret about things you buy, but don’t need
• Future resentment about things you can’t afford because of the things you bought that you don’t need
• Worry about how you will afford to support yourself and your family in the future
This makes room for you to carve out your own perfectly imperfect life, and frees you up to look for happiness right where you are.
WABI-SABI -INSPIRED WISDOM
FOR CHERISHING THE MOMENTS
• Embracing each life stage allows you to age with grace.
• You will not be here for ever. Neither will your loved ones. Make the most of each other and of each day.
• The only true perfection is found in fleeting moments of beauty. Cherish each one.
TRY IT: NOTICING ALL THE THINGS
A millennium ago, in her famous publication, The Pillow Book , Japanese poetess Sei Shōnagon wrote many artful lists of ‘Things That …’ (for example, ‘Things That Do Not Linger’) as a way of noticing the world around her, and cherishing precious moments. Inspired by this, make your own lists or poems, using the following prompts, or making up your own:
• Things I Only Notice When I Close My Eyes
• Things I Want To Keep In My Pocket Of Treasures
• Things That Make My Heart Expand
I t’s early March now, and I am sitting outside a café on the Philosopher’s Path in Kyōto. I have a hot coffee in one hand and a blanket tucked around my knees. Somewhere, a wind chime is tinkling, and the few remaining green leaves are shivering on the branches of trees alongside the waterway. A few weeks from now the cherry blossom will burst forth, and this path will be full of tourists. But for now, I have it to myself.
I am reflecting on the conversation I had a moment ago with Hiraiwa san, a young woman who works in the elegant Ginishō homewares shop just along the way, owned by KisoArtech, an innovative architecture company from Nagano. I asked her why she thought customers might sense an air of wabi sabi in her shop, where the walls are mottled, the small-batch items are all honed by hand from local wood, and the colours are sublimely dark and thoughtful. Her answer had nothing to do with any of those things.
She said, ‘I think it’s because we are in a place where we experience the changing seasons intimately, and there is a blurred boundary between inside and out, with the shop set just on the edge of the waterway. It feels like we are part of nature here.’
I have probably been to this part of Kyōto more than fifty times, first as a teenager, for weekly ikebana lessons at Mrs Tanaka’s house nearby and, more recently, seeking out fireflies on summer evening cycles with Mr K. Once, as a penniless student, I took a lonely winter walk trying to figure out how to stretch my meagre budget for the rest of the month. Another time there was tea and cake in autumn. And now here I am again, at the turn of the season, reflecting on how far we have travelled, and all that we have learned in our search for the truth about wabi sabi.
What started out as an exploration into beauty became so much more than that. It became a whole new way of experiencing the world, not with the logical mind but with the feeling heart, and with all our senses. Wabi sabi has shown us how fleeting moments of exquisite, evanescent beauty can remind us of the preciousness of life itself.
A small bowl sitting in one’s hand
Contains the whole of the universe. 1
RAKU KICHIZAEMON XV,
FIFTEENTH-GENERATION JAPANESE POTTER
For me, the greatest teaching of wabi sabi has been the shift in perspective. Looking at the world through the lens of wabi sabi has transformed it into a more beautiful, gentle and forgiving place, full of possibility and delight.
Early on in this book I said, ‘wabi sabi is a bit like love’. What I have discovered along the way is that actually, wabi sabi is a lot like love. It is akin to loving appreciation – for beauty, for nature, for ourselves, for each other and for life itself.
I hope you too have seen how wabi sabi can be a refreshing antidote to our fast-paced, consumption-driven world, and that it has encouraged you to slow down, reconnect with nature and be gentler on yourself. I hope you have been inspired to simplify everything, and concentrate on what really matters, finding happiness right where you are.
As we come to the end of our journey together, I have one final souvenir for you. Hold out your hands and imagine your gift. It is an omamori ( ), an amulet to keep you safe as you journey forward. On the front is embroidered the character sachi ( ), for happiness. 2 On the back is written a gentle reminder:
You are perfectly imperfect,
just as you are.
P ractically speaking, the wheels of this book were set in motion over steaming bowls of noodles a
t a rāmen bar in London, with my brilliant agent Caroline Hardman of Hardman & Swainson. I am eternally grateful to Caroline for her unending enthusiasm for this project, and to her colleague Thérèse Coen for getting it into the hands of people all over the world, in many different languages. It is an absolute privilege to share my love of all things Japanese with so many people, and I hope this book inspires you to make your own visit to Japan.
I offer a deep bow to my marvellous editor, Anna Steadman, to Jillian Stewart, Anne Newman, Beth Wright, Aimee Kitson, Bekki Guyatt and the rest of the fantastic team at Piatkus and Little, Brown, for bringing this book to life, getting it out into the world in such a beautiful way, and allowing me to do what I love and call it work. And I would like to say a special thank-you to my friend Hidetoshi Nakata for the beautiful foreword he shared in this book.
The truth is, I have been carrying this book inside me for the best part of two decades, and for that I am deeply grateful to my friends and surrogate families in Japan (the Itōs, the Adachis and Hilary Frank), and my long-suffering teachers at the University of Durham, the University of Bath and the Kyōto Institute of Culture and Language, as well as the many strangers who have shown me extraordinary kindness along the way.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Dr Naomi Cross, Kaori Nishizawa, Hiroko Tamaki and Bruce Hamana for their support in checking Japanese language and cultural references and historical facts, and for their incredible patience in the face of my endless questions. Any errors that slipped through the net are solely my responsibility.
This journey has been a treasure hunt. Every conversation held a clue. Throwaway comments led to particular books, or poems or places. A friend of a friend’s introduction to ‘someone you must meet’ has led to unexpected insights, and yet more introductions. It was quite daunting to head out on this journey, truly not knowing where it would take me, but it has been worth the leap of faith.