An Education of Growth

I had a gem of a conversation about the state of the world with a friend (a New Zealander) that I hadn’t seen in a long time. He asked me “Why do you think there are good people and bad people in the world?”, and I replied “I don’t think there’s a distinction between good people and bad people”. He seemed to have a mindset like “If only we could get rid of all that sort”, and apparently couldn’t parse my response of ‘even people who get called “bad” weren’t always bad’.

What he calls “good people” really means those who preserve the establishment and who do the “right” thing, but what is right or not changes depending on the culture or the era and it’s not quite as simple as those that maintain their allegiance to what they’re told are necessarily serving society. Conversely, when “bad” things happen, they might be the result of dissatisfaction or frustration with society and there are often instances where they even become catalysts for the betterment of society. But attacking people and damaging people’s property because you’re dissatisfied certainly can’t be called mature behaviour.

This “mature” gets used a lot, but if we use the Japanese equivalent of seichou shita (grown, grown up)/seijuku shita (ripe, developed), then the opposite, immature, would be mijuku (unripe, undeveloped). For example, the word “grown up” when you say “He’s really grown up” has this meaning of mature, but how mature they are isn’t necessarily proportional to their actual age. There are primary school kids who are wise and intelligent just as there are grown-ups who are juvenile and immature. But everyone is still growing, even if the rate at which or the way it happens is different.

So, we can’t separate people into “mature” and “immature”; even within the same person the mature and the immature parts will often be intertwined. For example, a highly educated, hugely successful businessman may be as emotionally immature as a child. Or a woman who leaves anything practical to her husband might still be a master of conflict resolution.

You absolutely don’t need to be the best at everything. Being independent, in its truest sense, means maturing both in terms of the practical and the emotional. Being emotionally mature is being able to calmly interact with people, such as:

         Listening to what the other person is saying

         Expressing your own feelings and opinions without getting emotional

         Empathising with the other person’s position

         Respecting your own will

         Trying to find common ground

         Accepting differences

If we could actually do even just these six things, crime rates would definitely fall, don’t you think?

These are the sorts of things that I want taught at school. Not saying ‘this and this are correct so do that’, but education that asks ‘how do you feel?’, ‘what do you want to do?’, ‘why do you think that?’.

There’s no greater happiness than when someone genuinely asks after and understands how we feel. Children who feel that their feelings are understood develop remarkable self-confidence. There’s no impulse in people who are able to believe in themselves to injure others nor need to compete with others. One comes to want to respect others just as one respects oneself.

“Take care of yourself, and then take just as good care of others.”.

If we could take the time to teach these kinds of things during the 9 years of compulsory education, it would completely change the world.

[You can find the original post "成長する教育"  in Japanese here.]

Head Strong?

Last semester, my health wasn’t great for quite a while. It wasn't that I was sore anywhere in particular, or that I had a fever. Rather, I was in a constant state of having not enough energy, like I had some lurking virus that just refused to come out. I topped up with vitamins and minerals, I got plenty of sleep, and I did all sorts of healthy things, but my exhausted body kept on not recovering.

Thinking about it now, my body was crying out “we’re doing too much!” Our bodies, in their wisdom, try to protect us and send out various signals to keep us from hitting a wall.  In response, our mind pushes the things we should do, the things we have to do – “You can’t be saying all this! This is our job!”

          Even if it’s impossible, you have to do it

          Take a pill and push through it

          You can take a break once you've finished, ok?

This time, it wasn’t just my body. I also had internal conflicts.

         

“I can’t give proper guidance like this”

           “I want to give my students more attention, but…”

It’s a far from ideal cycle of compromise, followed by more compromise.

The voice of reason in our head even tries to soothe our despair and indignation – “There’s nothing you can do about it, it’s the way of the times”. 

Our heads deny the voice of our body and its wisdom, and the cries of our child-like spirit.

At what point did our head get into such an estimable position?

Even though our body and our heart are just as important as our head, no-one told me that. Or that the body, heart and mind are connected and if they fall out of synch then you run into trouble. Even at school, “studying” was distinct from “exercise”, and “physical education” was separate from “moral education”. Even when you were rubbish at exercise, you got into a good school, and moral education didn’t seem to be a factor.

Education for the purpose of developing one’s brain overwhelmingly took primacy. So, “a child with a good head” would climb step by step up the stairs to “success”, but no merit was given to being a kid who was healthy or kind-heated. It’s because of this kind of education that society is so “head strong”.

A myth has developed that “the man of superior intellect is the highest of men”, and it’s people with out of balance personalities who run companies, who become university lecturers, who come into positions of governing countries… But a leader, in the true sense, is a person who has achieved balance between the heart, the mind and the body. If we are to get this balance back, we have to stop singularly elevating the mind and reason, yeah? It’s fine for someone who happens to have a superior intellect to look into ways of exercising it well, but there’s no need to emphasise it beyond that.

Instead, it would be great to learn, from a young age, how to take proper care of your own body. Like what exercise and food works for you (it won’t be the same for any two people). Like looking into the shades of meaning in the signals your body sends you. Like having discussions about the physical changes of puberty.

Then, it would be great to deepen our emotional learning further and further. To share, listen to, and acknowledge the whole range of each other’s feelings. If we could simply speak our true feelings, and have someone who will listen to them, instead of them labelling them as “wrong”, that would probably be a complete life 180.

And it would be great to take time to meditate and practice opening our ears to the voice in our hearts. Please, moderate book learning and make this kind of time. And, it would be great if we could train up teachers who can teach these kinds of things.

Nowadays, there are teacher training courses in the summer holidays and, even though it’s a huge ask, instead of lectures on our specialised subjects, we really should be doing more and more with trying to get involved in how we can advance physical and emotional learning.

Let’s stop weirdly worshipping “people with good heads” and get on with reworking our head-strong society. And with giving our sincere thanks to our body, our heart, and our mind, that work tirelessly for us. Obtaining balance is genuinely difficult, but, every day, I’m working on it.

[You can find the original post 「頭でっかち」 in Japanese here.]

Let’s Lower the Bar

From time to time, there are things about which I have to make enquiries and I end up on a call to Japan. It can be a shop, it can be a travel agent, it can be a university office. The people on the other end are all different, but I always get such a good feeling. No matter who you talk to and what their job is, everyone responds politely and professionally. It’s times like these that I get back to thinking “Man, isn’t Japanese culture great…” Here, there’s lots of friendly people, but it’s not uncommon to find people who are clueless about their jobs. If you ask a slightly complicated question, they’ll be hard pressed for an answer, and in some extreme cases, they’ll just blasély say, “I have no idea!” In Japan, if you said “I have no idea to a customer, it would be a huge deal, but the people here are relaxed and aren’t ashamed of their ignorance and so they’re chilled out, even when they’re doing what would be a full mea culpa routine in Japan. In the eyes of Japanese people, this comes off as utter rudeness! Being born and raised in Tokyo, when faced with such a completely laid-back attitude, even I get taken aback.

But, memorising all of a product’s minutiae and getting to grips with Japan’s entire transport network is pretty intense, don’t you think?
(Someone’s going to come at me with a “What are you saying? That’s all part and parcel!”…)

I understand that in an old-school employment system (working in one place for your whole life) that you get more and more specialised knowledge and that people around you have that expectation. But now career changes are becoming more common, new products come out faster and faster, and everything keeps on changing at dizzying speeds. When, despite this, we’re asked to apply the same standards as before, it causes huge amounts of stress. Up to a decade ago, if there was something you didn’t know, time was you could take your time and say “I’ll just go out back and check” or “I’ll know by tomorrow” until you found an answer. But now you’ve usually got an answer within a second. This not having to wait around for a response is, at first glance, convenient and a relief, but at the same time, what about the amount of external pressure that then multiplies? And it gets even worse if the boss is a perfectionist.

If you want absolutely everything done perfectly, even if you could be everywhere at once, it wouldn’t be enough. I reckon that, “maybe we don’t have to do things so perfectly, and what would happen if we let something slip just a little”…

It depends how you look at things.

What if we gave up the standard we’ve been convinced of up to now that if I don’t do this then I’m in trouble and lowered it a little?

Normally it’s difficult to see whereabouts our standards are, but if you’re like “I do my job perfectly and I get that recognition, but I’m always tired I never have enough time”, maybe the bar’s set a little too high.

A big part of these standards comes from other people’s expectations, but a lot of it we make ourselves. And we become racked by ideas like how we can’t forgive ourselves for falling short of these standards. But we can say that, on a scale of 1 – 10, we’re at a 9, but what if we drop to about a 7.5?

There’s no need to go down to the level of the chilled out shop assistants in this country (around about a 5?) If you used to be an honours student, the type who “failed” if they got less than 85%, then now’s your chance more than ever!

If you manage 75%, bravo! What we ought to be asking here is “Can I accept myself at 75%?” There are concerns of “if I do this, then what will my boss, my co-workers, my clients, my students…” whatever. But the real point is “Can I accept myself doing this and nothing more than this?”

Am I still worthy?

Of course you are!

To ease up a little is to take care of yourself. It’s lending an ear to your own needs, and giving yourself some looking after. And the more you make yourself a priority, the better you can contribute to those around you. Now that’s the kind of person that we can really call a person of worth.

(You can find the original post 「水準を下げよう」in Japanese here.)

Choosing “not-to-do”

A colleague at work told me that last week she spent a day in hospital for gallstones and that, since then, she has been taking painkillers five times a day while still coming to work. She thankfully survived last year’s restructuring, but she says that she’s hounded by her workload being 1.5 times what it was before and she doesn’t even have time to catch her breath. When I told her “stress is the root of sickness”, she denied any connection between her illness and her job. I don’t know what her real motives were – if she didn’t want to show weakness to a colleague or if she genuinely thinks that stress and sickness are separate – but it seemed excruciating.

As technology has advanced and so many things have become easier now that we don’t have to do them all by hand, you’d think we’d be able to have some breathing room… But, at the same time, the number of workers is decreased and the people that are left, instead of having that breathing room, are busier than ever. Faced with this situation, people often say “Such is the way of the times (there’s nothing you can do)”. As someone who isn’t mainstream I’m surprised by this kind of submissiveness, but I too came under pressure from the wave of streamlining as it unrelentingly surged toward me.

One of the things one could do is to reduce the amount of work. That being said, my workload was actually the same as before, but I couldn’t get the same salary level for just doing that, so, I went ahead and took a pay cut. I had never even considered this option, but ask and it shall be given unto you. And, these past few years, I’ve repeatedly chosen to reduce my workload further. I’ve passed the work that I’ve cut down on to other academic staff and, rather than having any kind of negative economic impact on the office, it has brought about a cost-effective and efficient result. It’s a total coup.

Even though the university and my colleagues are happy with the adjustment and it’s all going smoothly, personally, it’s a decision that takes real courage, right? At least, that’s what I think. It’s work that I’ve put my passion into, and there has been some nervousness about whether things will be ok with my reduced income. But, once I let go, there wasn’t anything that I missed. And on top of that, I was happier than anything to get that time and space. So, I want to say to all the people whose situation seems dire “Just let go!” Things will still be ok if you let go.

But, generally, no matter how dire the situation, it’s not that easy to let go. The world not only never reproaches super busy people, but instead it honours and applauds them. Being busy means prosperity, success, and is proof that you are in demand. I’m so busy = I’m doing well. Tonnes of us believe that “having things to do = having worth”.

Having nothing to do = boring = useless

Having nothing to do = because I can’t = incompetence

Having nothing to do = not sought after = worthless

This kind of template gets extended and drives people who “aren’t doing” into anxiety. We desperately set about doing all sorts of things, trying to fill up the gaps in our schedule so that we don’t end up in the pitiable position of having nothing to do. Maybe the reason why lots of us freak out unless we always have something to do, or tend to get depressed on our days off, is because we can’t really reconcile us as “not doing anything”.

But we need to have some buffers in life, right? My colleague with the gallstones says that whenever someone is off sick, that person’s work gets passed on, on top of her “1.5 workload”. Assigning a spare person to be able to cover in emergencies, well that’s just wasteful isn’t it.

At first glance, it seems pointless, but in those times when you’re not doing anything, there are amazing flashes of inspiration. It’s precisely because you have no plans that you’re able to take last minute requests and invitations, and it is a truly joyous thing to be able to inefficiently pass away the idle hours together.

As Tsuji Shinichi of the Sloth Club says: Love is “wasting time for someone else’s sake”. He calls for people to “leave a life being chased by “things to do””. To go from “I have to” to “I don’t have to”…

We don’t have to work so hard and do all these different things. Because we are worth enough, just by being where we are.

[You can find the original post 「しないという選択」 in Japanese here.]

Order out of Chaos

At a particular primary school in New Zealand, they examined relaxing rules around recess. Climbing trees is ok, skateboarding is ok, bullrush is ok, even playing around the scrapheap around the back of the school is ok. The children, lost in their play, now that they were allowed to play to their heart's content, have ended up having no time for bullying, graffiti, or vandalism. 

As a result, the number of teachers on duty can also be decreased and, according to the principal, “The school is in a state of chaos, but no-one gets hurt!”. Even though “dangerous” play is allowed, the number of injuries is in decline and, in the classroom, motivation and concentration levels are on the up. A trial done as part of a university study showed how effective this was and, at this school, the relaxation of the rules continued...

Now, as someone from the older generation, I feel like “It's got to the point where they can't even climb trees?”. But nowadays, parents' conceptions of danger have changed and once something's “dangerous”, it not easy to re-instate it. It takes real courage for a principal with charge over however many hundreds of students to make a decision like this.

If you want to manage a large group of people, especially if they’re young kids, the most effective way is to start by restricting their range of activities and reduce their degree of freedom. That’s reasonable…

           If we do that, it's easy to keep an eye on them and they'll have fewer accidents

And, we'll put in all sorts of rules and keep the people that break them under control

And everyone else will be behaving according to the rules, and then we can be “at peace”

         

But people whose activities are restricted and are constrained by rules are the complete opposite of “at peace”. Their hearts, far from being peaceful, are filled with a smouldering frustration and who knows when it's going to erupt. When things are like that, there's no way they can concentrate and their motivation becomes trapped.

And of course we all want to be free to do the things we want to do.

“But, if we let people run wild, isn't it going to be a complete debacle?”

For a manager, such a situation would mean a complete failure and it is terrifying.

Recently, even in the workplace, instances of managing employee behaviour have been increasing, utilising a whole host of brand new technologies. A delivery company in America has been radically increasing its profits by closely monitoring its drivers' behaviour. For these drivers, even tiny delays are to be kept under control, even the time it takes to remove their seat belt, and so some of them drive without wearing them.

With truck drivers, they're outdoors and they're friends with their regulars on their delivery rounds and at one point it was a popular industry. But now that it's become micro-managed down to the second, a lot of them are plagued with injuries, illness...and even divorce. I feel like saying “If that's the kind of trust you have in your employees, how about you quit being a boss?” Isn't “being able to feel like you are trusted” part of “job satisfaction”?

If we're afraid of chaos, it's because we have no faith in the order of the universe. Perhaps that principal is entrusting the safety of those children to something greater. Otherwise, where's the guarantee that, if they fall out of a tree, they're not going to break any bones, that they're not going to catch tetanus from a rusty nail, and that when one of them gets tackled in a game of bullrush, it’s all going to be ok?,

At first glance, the school grounds are hugely chaotic, but in reality, a mysterious order is being kept. From this comes true peace of mind.

[You can find the original post 「混沌の中の秩序」in Japanese here.]