Simple living is virtous?

Perfect Days (Japanese, 2023)
Director: Wim Wenders

(Please note: It is plural, not singular. Every day is a perfect day, and there are many!)

This is a reminder to recreational cyclists over 60: Just enjoy every opportunity that comes your way. By the twist of fate or alms from karma, you can go out, pedal, and feel the wind whisk by as you zoom downhill. Only some people are gifted with the privilege to do this. There is no need to outdo a fellow cyclist, go all out for a personal record, or invest in a state-of-the-art, spanking-new machine to keep up with the Joneses. Every completed cycling route happens on a perfect day. There will be many perfect days.

This beautifully crafted film gets all my thumbs up. It moves very slowly with apparently no definite direction, but that, in essence, that is the message behind the movie. We should find happiness in the things around us. 

The protagonist, Hirayama, is a creature of routine. He gets up to the rhythmic pace of a street sweeper sweeping the street. From that, it is like clockwork. Folding his mattress neatly, washing up, trimming his moustache, slipping into his overalls, and getting his keys organised, he exits his door. He looks out gleefully at the morning sky. Next is coffee from the vending machine, and gets into his working van. In the truck, he listens to songs that suit his mood on a cassette player! He is a proud, dedicated worker who cleans public toilets. 

Even though he realises that he is viewed with condescension, he knows his job is essential and does it diligently. 

His lunchtime routine is also set. Armed with a packet of drinks and a sandwich, he sits on the same park bench every day, observing people and seeing the ray of light dancing through the shadows of the leaf (Komorebi*). He snaps moments he finds something fascinating on his analogue automatic camera (with physical films!). His mobile phone is also an analogue. He is content without learning to take digital photos or using apps like Spotify. He sneers at them and is pleasantly surprised that his cassette can fetch much money if sold. He is happy having his daily bath at the public bath and eating from the same stall at the food court. Once in a while, he would visit a lady who runs her small restaurant and sometimes sings for her customers.

A few things happen in his mundane life. His niece, his sister's daughter, runs away from her wealthy home for a few days. Hirayama's sister turns up, and we learn about his animosity or disagreement with his ailing father. The lady restaurant, whom Hirayama secretly fancies, is seen caught in a passionate embrace with an unknown man.  

He threads everything in a stride and never fails to catch up by reading classic short stories and essays before he retires for the night, including Shakespeare and Faulkner. 

Our minds like to wander. Probably because of that, a regimental style of life is prescribed to live right. We are told to live simply. Unfortunately, it does not work at a collective level. If everyone maintains an Epicurean form of living, being content with the bare minimum and not venturing beyond his comfort zone or, like Sissyphus, accepting his fate as someone who needs to find happiness within his endless rolling up the boulder and it rolling back, the human race would still be dwelling in caves! 'Now is now' and 'next time is next time', as Hiroyama advocates, give peace of mind to an individual, not protect the community from adversities. 4.5/5.

* Komorebi is a Japanese word that means the play of sunlight through leaves. 

** Hirayama's excellent cassette collection includes Lou Reed, the Kinks, Otis Redding, Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, and more

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Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death. Arthur Schopenhauer.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Every living day is a learning experience

So you go around with a chip on your shoulder, with the nose so high up in the air as if you walk inhaling imported air. You straddle around like you are on Yudhistira's chariot, always two feet above the ground, quite full of air. You speak with such confidence convinced that your listeners are impressed with your command of the language.

You think you produced a masterpiece that everybody would sing only praises of it. That is until you send it for proofreading.

That is when your bubble bursts, your ego gets deflated, and you get down from your mighty horse and is brought down to the ground. You soon realise that the things which you had taken for granted mean more than what meets the eyes.

You get an extra 'e' when you are a lady engaged to a man. A fiancée is to a female just what a fiancé is to a man.

Everything seems watertight as if you have a foolproof system but your friends tell you that he has full proof that 'fullproof' is not even a word! I guess you are the fool now.

You thought you had thrashed out all your work of trash, forgetting an 'h' thrashes your good to the trash bin. It just 'hanged' your credibility, not to have it hung in the hall of fame. Even your offspring cannot help as no matter how many of them you have, you will never know. The plural of offspring is offspring. You, even in the sleekest way, is not slick enough to notice that. I guess you should not have been too emphatic on your convictions but rather be empathetic to others' views as well. Anyway, I am contented that you have decided to put your ego aside and contend with all the line of corrections. But, I do wonder sometimes if it is all a facade, and you may wander into other fields to avenge after your recent ego-bruising experiences.

But we move on...

Behind the veil

Views from the other side

Recently, one of email buddies sent me a powerpoint presentation on the ordeals of the ladies behind the meshed veil of the burqa had to endure in a male dominated society all in the name of man's own interpretation of the religion. Their voices are muffled by the sobbing sounds of their unheard cries in the dark.
That got me thinking.... 
In fact, in our own everyday world close to us, there are many amongst us who walk around putting up a front covering the sorrows that they carry behind the mask that they wear on their faces. Just like they say in show business, "Honey, the show has to go on!", life has to go on...

Norman Bates & Bates Motel

I know a general practitioner, who is forever ready with his pearly-white teethed smile, was diagnosed with cancer of the urinary bladder about 2 years previously. He is still smiling these days after enduring 12 hours of radical surgery, nauseating chemotherapy afterwards, losing erectile and ejaculatory functions, losing his bladder and uses a stomal bag for urinary functions. And he is still practicing medicine to treat others as well as to provide for his young family.
Just like a lady that I know  who only moves in high society, attending one party after another. Her younger sister is an equally high heeled jet trotting executive in a successful multinational company. The youngest sibling, unable to live up to the sisters' mark lost the rat race and was labelled a schizophrenic. Struggling to manage himself, he needs the help of his ailing mother for guidance. But how long? So much of anxiety...
So the next time when you are in a situation where someone is hogging the road and you are in a hurry, take a step back and ponder. You do not know what hopeless situation he may be in. His wife could have died or something worse. You do not know what trouble he is in. Maybe you do not want to be in his shoes.

A happy man

Or the annoying man who is talking on top of his voice in a school concert in an unknown language. May be it is not because he lacks common phone etiquette or common sense, he may be in hot soup. Like they say, "I was complaining that I have no nice shoes to wear till I saw a man with no legs!"
Everybody wears a mask to face the real world. Do you seriously think that the runners-up in the Miss World is all joy and smiles for losing the crown or the worker who laughs it away when his boss reprimands him?
We want everything to be perfect for us but in reality we have to live with the imperfection that is endowed upon us and to get the best out of the less than perfect to newer heights.