PONDERING MY LIFE (1)

Excuse the long silence! My life has been filled with green – new green leaves on every tree, green scuzz increasing to green swathes of wild plants in the garden, and somewhat less healthy green shoots for summer vegetables I planted. I’ve been dealing with this green in one way or another since April, and as everyone who does this knows, May, June and July are the peak of it.

And now it’s raining, the monsoon season (“rainy season”) is here. Everything is damp, and things are growing apace with no human check. We expect this to continue until well into July, the season is traditionally considered at an end when a few violent thunderstorms herald the approach of summer.

One interesting new study this has led to is using wild plants (formerly known as “weeds”) for food and other things. This has led me to notice the shapes and sizes of all plants, not only the “useful” ones, and especially how they flower and seed at this season. The homeliest grass verge has untold miracles happening every second for those with the patience to look.

I have also noticed what other people have growing in their gardens and have become increasingly bold about approaching them to get cuttings, bulbs, etc. Just this morning I harvested a basketful of ripe mulberries from a bush in the garden of an unoccupied house. Hopefully I’m going to make jam from them, mixed with Japanese cherries and a few strawberries from my own plants. I have to hurry up with this as my blueberries will soon be ripe, necessitating harvest and jam-making again.

We expect rain this afternoon, again, so I’m going to write this and hopefully get it finished and out by today. Then I will write a Solstice blog in another couple of weeks.

And so on to the topic of this blog, which is pondering on my life as a whole, and the approaches I have devised, with some help, to deal with my out-of-control anger. My counselor said that anger is an emotion which often masks the soul work that needs to be done with regard to underlying sadness. I have kept a diary for this since the end of April and have touched on some of the things that sadden me, which turn to anger, which unfortunately I project onto whoever is nearby (usually my husband).

I find it easier to get angry now that I am older and more time is spent alone… why is that? It is not considered OK in Japan to give vent to anger, or even to raise one’s voice. Increasingly I feel I am in the wrong place.

As I explored this, I learned and remembered many things. I had a conversation with my childhood self, a propos of a letter I wrote to Santa at age 6 and which I found among some papers. It read in part,

   　 Dear Santa Claus, I am six now. Am I being good? I don’t know. You know.

   　 Please tell me. Oh, I want to know so.

The letter went on with a couple of things I wanted for Christmas, but it’s telling that the first thing I thought of was that Santa keeps a list of good and bad children, and I wanted to know whether I was being good. What exactly is “good”? My younger self seemed to say that one of the biggest sources of my sadness at that time (and now) is never knowing when one is “good” and how exactly to improve oneself when one is “bad”.  

A consciousness of oneself as good or bad usually has either feelings if shame or guilt as its base. What is the difference? Well, when one feels shame one is basing one’s behavior on others, whereas guilt is internal and bases behavior on rules (often seeming to come from a Supreme Being but actually made up by humans) or else on one’s own judgment of oneself. Ah, here is the problem issue – the ubiquity of judgment.

I have always judged myself and others on various criteria. This comes, I think, from my mother’s family, particularly my grandfather. The family I married into is also very judgmental, constantly making judgments (of others, and also themselves) based on what seem to me insignificant criteria, consigning others to their personal garbage cans with a few well-chosen words. More about this, and my relation to Japanese culture, in Part 2.

Recently I noticed how painful this judgment can be. One can readily be reduced to a puddle of self-pity by nagging and abusing oneself for things done or not done. If one is judging others, one usually falls into the trap of judging based on too little information; every human being’s situation is much more complex than outsiders could ever imagine. When we judge others (or oneself) we usually are too harsh or cruel with too little understanding.  

Where does this propensity for judging come from? Perhaps from the human desire to put everything on a hierarchical scale, to know where the top and bottom are and to fit oneself into it in relation to these. Living in Japan, where everything is hierarchical, I have felt this keenly. Even before living here, I have always been allergic to competition of any kind, not least because I can feel the unhealthy excitement in myself when I am winning even the least important and most mundane game.

It is natural, or at least human nature, I suppose, to create a scale and then try to measure up to it, as it is to castigate oneself when one doesn’t make the grade. Why is it natural? Other animals and plants don’t have it, in the sense of superiority or inferiority, except in matters of survival. I would bet that animals and plants don’t judge themselves or castigate themselves for not measuring up to an ideal either. At least, not in my observation. Is it because measuring up to a scale is the easiest way to feel “how am I doing?” Is it because humans must move forward, as sharks do, and it is simple to measure “improvement” if there is a scale to measure things by? Some measure themselves by other human beings, and some by obedience or otherwise to a Supreme Being. How are these different?

Wow, I am already up to the word limit for a blog that I set myself. These topics and others will have to wait till Part 2. Thanks for reading.