Monthly Archives: August 2020

Dad (part 1) “Running”

by in Boundary Behavior, Culture, Dad, Death, Family, Fear, Identity, Japan, Loneliness, Love, Luminous Aether, Risk, War | 28 Comments

“No matter how far you run, distance might not solve anything.”
― Haruki Murakami, “Kafka on the Shore”

Mid-August is the time of “Obon”, the festival that according to Japanese tradition is a time when the spirits of ancestors return to visit their loved ones. “Obon”, derived from the Sanskrit word, “ullambana”, refers to the suffering of the spirits.  The festival is seen as a time when the living might free them of their troubles, though I suspect the custom works more to the contrary.  One of the last happy moments I shared with my mom was at an “Obon-odori”, a festival dance.  And while I do keep a family shrine, it’s merely to maintain some sense of place within the images it shelters.  Among its photos is one of my dad.

Despite being close to my dad, I’ve never written much about him.  I think there’s just too much that I don’t have the means, or maybe even the knowledge to properly explain.  While I loved and respected my father, I wasn’t anything like him.  He was a committed pacifist and observant Buddhist, things my teenage mind attributed merely to naivete and superstition.  I really only began to understand him near the end of his life.

I first started running with my dad when I was twelve years old, mostly just because it was a way to spend some time with him.  As I grew older, I followed along with more of his activities.  He taught me how to ski in old free-heel gear, and how to use a rope, and how to climb… and sometimes just to sit in stillness.  Years after he was gone, I discovered that the latter were among the things that he had learned from his own father.  But the running was his own, and lasted until the day that he died.

Much of my dad’s idealism went down the drain with the collapse of Japan’s progressive movement in the 1970’s.  He had come to the conclusion that too many of the people with the passion to drive change are also affected by too much of a compulsion to fight, so that the conflict ends up overshadowing the message.  I don’t think he would have been much surprised by recent events in both Hong Kong and in the US.  But he never lost his personal sense of responsibility in compassion for others.  And despite never really understanding its source, that was probably what most impressed me in my youth. 

I was my dad’s firstborn.  My older sister is actually my half-sister, her “koseki”, or legal family registry entry in Japan recording a different family name.  But she’s always insisted that my father never treated her as anything but his own, and that she was as much a part of his family as were my brother and myself. Like Mrs. Murasaki, the older woman who was our live-in “nanny” when I was very young, or the Japanese couple who lived with us for two months after the wife lost her baby in the US… that was my dad.

Not long after moving to the US in the mid 70’s, a man approached my father asking if he could, “spare some change”. As my dad handed him what was probably a couple of dollars, the man explained that he had just ridden a train into the city and was wondering if there was a place to get a coffee. I commented that it must be fun to travel on a train. But the man responded that it was better to have a good place to belong, while gesturing to my father.

My dad watched as the man walked away, eventually going after him. In the distance, they talked for a moment before my dad handed him something else.  I could hear the, “Thank you!” and, “God bless you!” in the distance.  My dad explained to me later about Americans traveling on freight trains.

My dad’s character was certainly the product of many things.  But I suspect that much was the result of a single event in his life, a tragic diffusion of responsibility that happened a little before his ninth birthday.  I didn’t know much about it until I was older, but I think it left him with a sort of existential angst to express his own will in “doing the right thing”.  I’m certain that it played a role in his considering himself an ethical Buddhist and in becoming a physician, though he always said the latter was merely something expected of a second son. 

I’m still grateful that he was willing to break those old traditions, as I was not even a “son”.  But he saw me suffering through the old family customs, and let me follow his lead instead.  So I was at least able to share in some of his adventures.  And quietly perhaps, he even encouraged a few of my own.  Still, I have no photograph of that understanding image of my father that lives in the shrine of my mind.

Quietly returning home from his rounds, a dark silhouette would emerge in the back yard of our homes in both Japan and the US.  My father would watch the gathering darkness in silence, sunsets having become the focus of silent meditations on the impermanence of things.  But if I sat next to him, he would put an arm around me and I would know I had a place.  And as I grew into an adult, he would also sometimes share his thoughts.  A few of them even became my own.  And sometimes, I’ll think about them on a long run.

 

In Defense of Laziness

by in Boundary Behavior, Hmmm..., Identity | 32 Comments

“Nature is thrifty in all its actions… The laws of movement and of rest deduced from this principle being precisely the same as those observed in nature, we can admire the application of it to all phenomena. The movement of animals, the vegetative growth of plants … are only its consequences…”
— Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, mathematician, philosopher, man-of-letters, and a man of many quarrels (1698–1759)
—

Sitting on a patio chair with a soda water while contemplating whether I should rake and mow the lawn or just put my feet up and take a nap, I’m also pondering something a friend said this morning. While taking a break after an early morning bike ride, she commented that she was impressed by my self-discipline… which made me laugh. Ironically, it reminded me of a comment I made to someone on my last post.

“Those excruciating acts of self discipline to others are to me simply alternatives to chain smoking, drug-addiction, and staring at a cell-phone.”

I’ve always seen self-discipline as something momentary and having only a short-term effect. That’s to say that it’s only useful for sticking to something unpleasant when you’re already doing it… powering through a difficult test question, getting a chapter finished, making one more push on the pedal. 

So yeah, it’s important to develop. But it implies that you’re already focused on something and enduring through it.  Regardless, most people seem to be of the opinion that it also takes self-discipline to get those kinds of things started.  Personally, however, I think that can be an unnecessarily difficult and potentially unrewarding approach.

Humans evolved to be lazy creatures. Contrary to the naive representation, “natural selection” isn’t about being the biggest, the toughest, or the fastest. Natural selection is simply a competition for efficiency. In an environment where resources are limited, designs (and behaviors) that produce the highest return for the least investment will also be the most likely to survive. And conserving energy when survival needs have been met is a common and effective strategy in achieving this.

A good friend once commented how, during a hunting trip, he watched a herd of deer through binoculars as a mountain lion slowly approached them. At some point, the deer became aware of the mountain lion, and bolted away. The predator gave chase, but only very briefly before cutting its losses and saving its energy for later. But what surprised my friend most was that within seconds the deer were back to grazing just a few hundred yards away. Laziness over self-discipline.

In humans, the development of the cognitive power to make predictions, and thus utilize self-discipline, represents a huge evolutionary investment. About twenty-percent of the human body’s daily energy consumption goes into just maintaining and fueling the about three-pounds of calculating oatmeal stuffed between a pair of human ears. But that same mess of neurons also has direct control over a multitude of other activities upon which humans may unnecessarily expend energy.

Sensing sufficient hydration and nutrition, safety, and perhaps reproductive attempts, a normal brain will command that the feet should go up and a nap ensue.  Fighting against that with self-discipline requires an appeal to mental energy, and at a time when that’s already been dialed down.  And that sounds like a losing proposition to me.  So what was my friend confusing with self-discipline this morning?

Getting ready for a morning run usually goes something like this: “It won’t hurt to skip a day,” while putting on my under-stuff. “My leg hurts. I should give it a rest,” while putting on my shorts. “It’s too cold/hot/windy/etc…” while I put on my shirt. “Oh yeah, I need to answer that email first,” while I pull on my socks. “I should set up a new pair of shoes,” while putting them on. “I don’t feel good enough to run today,” while I put on my hat. “Hey! Are you listening?” As I tuck in the bear spray and head out the door.

It even continues through that first mile, where I’ll start thinking, “I can’t possibly make the distance today.” And at that point, I might apply just a little self-discipline to keep going right then and there, maybe with the added relief of an assurance of a re-evaluation in another half-mile. But eventually the focus always shifts to the routines of the task at hand, and then the endorphins start to kick in.

Admittedly, a morning coffee helps some. But I’m not kidding. If I had to rely solely upon self-discipline to keep me going, the fire department would have to dig me out from under the pizza boxes and beer bottles piled on the sofa after the neighbors complained about the smell. So what’s going on here?

At the risk of sounding like I’m merely appealing to some (probably copyrighted) corporate trope, I… “Just do it!”

My feeling is that the human tendency is to think too much when we should simply be focusing on the activity at that moment. The thinking part should already be done before you start. In effect, I already know what I want. Everything else is just going through the motions.

And that being the case, my brain can freewheel away thinking whatever it wants to think while I move on the next motion. There’s no fight, so there’s no need for any self-discipline beyond what’s required for the most minimal of activities… like putting on a pair of shoes. And after awhile, even that simply turns into a routine.

If there’s a trick in all of this, it’s just to really and honestly know and understand what you want, and not in some nebulous way. And that requires some honesty, realistic assessment, and an understanding of what it’s going to take.  But at that point, all that’s really left is going through the motions… lifting one foot at a time to get there.