Don’t you have days when nothing goes right?
“Today just isn’t going the usual way.” “Why does everything I touch turn out like this — and it’s stuff I do every day, too.” I had sighed about it more than once already by mid-morning.
The kind of day people call unlucky.
Get on the train and go the wrong way on the platform; change lines and then overshoot the stop and have to come back. A task I do on autopilot every day, and suddenly — wait, how did this go again?
I drop things; my stomach starts hurting and I run for a toilet, and the one that is always empty is somehow occupied, in both the men’s and the women’s. Come on.
Laugh instead of getting irritated
Today started with the early-morning job, and everything downhill from there was the “unlucky day.” So I decided to just say it out loud.
“I seem to be having one of those days where nothing goes right” (laughs).
“Yeah, I could tell something was off with you.”
“So — go ahead and laugh it off, please!” (laughs).
I turned “why is this happening to me” into a little song, and laughter came out whether I liked it or not. Maybe that is all it takes, some days. I spent the day like that, not forgetting to be grateful to the people around me who let it go with a laugh.
Do everything you are told, honestly
Saying it out loud to other people got me some interesting suggestions — “why don’t you try this?” — and putting them into action, honestly, changed my mood too.
“You just don’t have enough heat in you! Go do a goma fire ritual or something.” “Isn’t there plenty of heat already, in this weather? Makes no sense, but I’ll go anyway!” So off I went to a fire ritual.
Fukagawa Fudōson in Kōtō, Tokyo — I genuinely recommend their goma ritual. It is held every day at
9:00, 11:00, 13:00, 15:00 and 17:00 — free, and a space that settles the mind completely.
Photography is not allowed, so this is borrowed from their website.
http://fukagawafudou.gr.jp/kitou/#goma
Impatience throws everything off
When you run into something that will not go right in life, impatience and anxiety come knocking, whether you like it or not. I am sure plenty of people have found that the more you rush, the deeper the hole gets.
Today, simply doing what someone told me, honestly, taught me that it matters, sometimes, to stop and pause for a moment.
Working towards a great challenge, feeling like even 24 hours a day is not enough time, I may have been carrying impatience and anxiety without even noticing.
Today’s “unlucky day” may not have been unlucky at all — it may have been a day I needed to notice something.
This challenge keeps handing me realisations like this. And right now there are friends spending their own precious life-time carrying my feelings forward for me.
How will you spend your own time alive?
This great challenge I chose — a first for a Japanese woman — I have decided to drive towards it with everything I have. There is no time to spend grumbling about what is not going right.
Do have a look, if you are interested.