Tag: Japanese

Percentages

To start with, January 2026 is 83% completed. How does that make you feel? How has the start of this year’s journey gone for you? For those of you affected by this winter storm over the weekend, I hope that you are 100% safe and warm. Interestingly, I read an article recently that suggested that Americans spend 90% of their time and days, indoors. Over the weekend, I went boating with my husband and so on Saturday, I spent at least 40% of my time outdoors, and it was wonderful. It was revitalizing. It was a great reminder that since I am as 100% part of nature as the trees, perhaps a few more percentage points of time outside each day would make an enormous difference in my vitality. It certainly couldn’t hurt anything.

Over the weekend, I was reading an interesting book about worry and anxiety by the Japanese writer, Shunmyo Masuno. In one chapter he repeated the idea that many of us have heard about the Japanese people’s philosophy on healthy eating. From early on, the Japanese people are taught to eat only until they are 80% full. The idea is that 80% is enough to satiate you, and once your body gets going into the digestion process, you will no longer feel hungry, and you will have not overeaten. Masuno suggests that the 80% is enough rule applies to all things in life, besides your meals. He says that no relationship, occupation or membership, etc. is going to fulfill you 100%. That’s damn near impossible. However, if roughly 80% of your values match in any relationship or situation that you are in, it is likely enough to satiate you. It is enough to bring satisfaction, and yet still leaves a little intrigue and interest and friction and curiosity about the 20% of things you perceive or handle differently than others.

The start of the year is usually a big time of reflection and new beginnings for many of us. The “80% is enough” rule is a good tool to use, to see where we need to put our focus on changes that we we want in our lives. Do we get 80% of our needs met in our most important relationships? Do we get 80% of what we want and need from our jobs and daily activities? Does where we live make us feel at least 80% satisfied? Do the organizations that we belong to and affiliate with, share at least 80% of our values? This is not to suggest that we need to settle, or to stop trying to improve. It just means that the areas that have glaringly lower percentages than 80% satisfaction in the pie chart of our individual lives – these are the areas where we should put our focus. If in each part our individual lives, we are hitting at least 80% satisfaction, it probably is enough. The rest is just to tweak a little.

“The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” – Ronald Reagan

(The 80/20 principle is attributed to Richard Koch.)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Beauty in Brokenness

I read a book recently that talks about the Japanese art of kintsugi.  Kintsugi is the process of repairing broken pottery with a lacquer filled with gold dust and other precious metals.   The kintsugi process has such a lovely result, that people have been accused of purposely breaking their ceramics so that these items can be repaired with the tell-tale look of the gold lines running through them, like a golden web or a yellow brick road on a map.  The Japanese often consider the repaired ceramic pieces to be even more beautiful and valuable than before, because their kintsugi shows that the pieces have a history and are worthy of being fixed.

Many people consider kintsugi to be part of the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi which means embracing the imperfect and flawed.  This passage is from The Book of Life website:

“In an age that worships youth, perfection and the new, the art of kintsugi retains a particular wisdom – as applicable to our own lives as it is to a broken tea cup. The care and love expended on the shattered pots should lend us the confidence to respect what is damaged and scarred, vulnerable and imperfect – starting with ourselves and those around us.”

Kintsugi is an excellent reminder that our scars and our hurts and our pains have lead us to a beautiful wisdom and a resilient strength.  When we reach middle age, it is nearly impossible to have not gone through some trials, many that may have brought us to our knees.  But we are still standing, and what we have gained in the process of making it through our struggles is actually a beautiful and a shining example to others on life’s journey, that it is possible to make it through the hard times and to be even more magnificent for it.  We should wear our battle scars with pride.  We should envision them as golden veins of hope and endurance.  We should embrace what is less than perfect in ourselves, and in doing so, allowing others to do the same for themselves.  Perhaps kintsugi is like a golden maze of veins in a heart, making it easy for love to flow through, even the most broken of anything.