Fujiko Suda

How some of us become strong

We had a great time talking, exchanging ideas and thoughts. My friend and I agreed that we grow because we were given the opportunity to grow. Our choice was to either keep being miserable about the past situation we lived through, or accept the past, learn, and move on.

But even as hope died in Sam, or seemed to die, it was turned to a new strength. Sam's plain hobbit-face grew stern, almost grim, as the will hardened in him, and he felt through all his limbs a thrill, as if he was turning into some creature of stone and steel that neither despair nor weariness nor endless barren miles could subdue.

The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien

Mastering business skills

Natural tendency of liking people and wanting to communicate is probably what makes a good interpreter. It is what probably makes a good painter of people. But I was not interested in pursuing the art of interpreting or painting. I think these skills are tools to pursue my path to mastering the art of doing business. I am lousy in taking care of details. But learning details is paramount in business, and I continue to go through the phases of mastering the art business.

In action, it makes a difference whether all you are trying to do is to act or whether you are trying to act competently. It helps a great deal to know what the hell you're doing. What are you going to do well? Are you going to be a painter, a Picasso? Is this where your life achievement is? That is a real sacrifice of life.
Whatever choice you make, there is a period of learning and analyzing, when you are not in action, the body is not in performance. Anyone who has taught somebody a skill has seen this stage, where the student is analyzing and trying to do it, but really not in it. Then, finally, the person is able to give expression to what he or she is intending to express.

Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion by Diane K. Osbon

Things that interest you

Lst week, I told my friend who was not sure what to write about on his blog that he needs to write about things that really interest him. Otherwise, writing will not continue.

Well, well, I need to practice what I preach!

I
Can't
Think
Of
What
I
Want
To
Write
About

I have lots and lots of fun each day. Things still make me laugh. I meet cool and interesting people. Yet I am not moved to write. What's really intersting? Perhaps it will come.

From Feynman's Rainbow

My scientist friend and I spoke the other day, and knowing how I revere Richard Feynman, he told me about Leonard Mlodinow's new book, Feynman's Rainbow. I immediately bought the book, and randomly browsed through it this morning.

"You're wasting your time," he said. "You don't learn how to discover things by reading books on it. And psychology is a bunch of bullshit." ... "What I would learn from your story is that if an ape can make a discovery, so can you."

I may not discover things by reading books only, but the combination of living and reading sure enhances my discovery! So very happy I met Feynman through books. So very happy I met my scientist friend.

Last Samurai - Return of the King

The first impression after seeing the Last Samurai is that it remided me of Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. Tom Cruise is cute. He can act. But as much as I like happy ending, I had to roll my eyes when I saw him going back to his love in the old village. Like Kevin Costner came out as the sole winner in the movie Dances with Wolves. Somehow this perception of the winner takes all bothers me.

I did enjoy the Last Samurai. It was thoroughly entertaining. But what got me totally excited today was the preview for the Lord of the Rings, Return of the King before seeing the Last Samurai. From the very beginning of the preview to the end, I was on the edge of my seat, tears in my eyes, lump in my throat, yet ready to shout for joy. The scenes were almost exactly as I experienced when I read Tolkien's book. Some descrepancy of story exist, but scenes and expressions are as I lived reading the book. Mount Doom, Minus Tirith, Eowyn and Merry in the great battle, Aragorn and his sword re-forged. I was knocking on Eowyn in the movie in the Two Towers, but in the preview of Return of the King, she was the Eowyn I remember in the great battle. I vow to go see the Return of the King as soon as it opens in next February. But before that, I think I will go see the extended version of the Two Towers at a movie theater.

Merry Brandybuck If I were a character in The Lord of the Rings, I would be Merry, Hobbit, heir of the Brandybucks and a friend of Frodo's. In the movie, I am played by Dominic Monaghan. Who would you be? Zovakware Lord of the Rings Test with Perseus Web Survey Software

Lighten up!

By chance, I stumbled onto Achikochi, vincentvds's blog tonight. Nice blog! I particularly enjoyed his Who? section. "Age: Cannot believe it myself. ...Old enough to know better?" Just cracked me up! "Hobbies: ... reading books knowing that I forget everything after one month, ...In one word, my whole life is one futile, useless hobby." What a way of looking at things! I totally agree. "Personal Bio: Lost in Japan since 1997" Come to think of it, I have been lost for god knows how long.

I love reading writings that express clear perspective of life and things through humour. That's why I often visit Isaoblog and Shinjuku 2 Chome ... (in Japanese). Re-reading my own writings over the past few months, I've found them dreadful. Most of them read like religious sermon. Even in some of the rare writings in lighter tone, there seem to always be a moral to it.

One of the big reason I married my husband is that he has a great sense of humour. With the family and with my friends and colleagues, we laugh together a lot. Phew, what a relief. Time for me to lighten up!

Learning from Carl Gustav Jung

This journey started with my blog based conversation with Sou-san. We started out talking about Pat Riley which lead me to read The Winner Within, then that book lead me to read Joseph Campbell Companion, and now, I am reading Carl Jung in The Essential Jung: Selected Writings. It's going to be another pleasurable, long read. I am not talking about the length of the book, but about the length it will take for me to weave Carl Jung's teachings into my thinking process.

Today, the following entry in the book excited me:

Introduction

The patients who interested him were those who had already freed themselves from the past sufficiently to become established in their own right; who were often successful in worldly terms; but who, in the mid-period of their lives, found that the world had become stale and unprofitable. Such people were seeking a meaning to their lives; and Jung's aim was to guide them along the path of individuation. Jungian analysis, therefore, was, and is, primarily oriented toward the patient's future.

This seem to me what my coaching friends are striving for. And although I have not yet become "successful in worldly terms", at the stage I am in my life, this is precisely what I have been seeking. Just a little conversation between me and Sou-san stimulated my curiousity, and I followed that curiousity. The trail has lead me to this path which I am walking now. It has become a journey to know myself. Wyuki-san talks in her blog (sorry for the reader who can't read Japanese! Her blog is all Japanese) about how we are not really aware of the exact moment when change happens in ourselves. This must be it. A little inertia born from trusting someone, then momentum picks up, and we are on our way.

Chance to start over

Another thing when my "cool" coach and I talked about during our dinner the other night was our mutual friend whom we admire very much. We both know he is the way he is because of the characteristics he was born with, and the family he was born into. We feel he is the way he is now because he over compensated for his weaknesses.

I was thinking of how he kept all the things that he cared about, things he collected during the course of his life. He moved from Kansai to Tokyo, but he brought with him just about all the "stuff" full of his past. How can he hold onto his past so much, and be able to embrace now and future with abandon? If he wants to live and love freely, he has to let go of his past. But I realized it requires herculean effort for him to be able to do that.

Looking back, I realize it was easy for me, because I didn't have any choice. I couldn't keep the stuff that reminded me of my past, because I had to move on without my precious things like momentos, books, diaries, records, photographs. First was when my mother decided to run away from Kagoshima to Tokyo. One day, she asked me if I would die with her. I immediately said no. I felt from the way she was acting, this is really serious, and I'd better not mess around. Then she just said, "Let's go." I was 8-years old, so I just followed. The second was when we moved to England. I was 11-years old, and we couldn't take much with us. When I divorced, I left everything behind. When I came back to Japan with my son, I only brought with me minimal things. Now living in a cramped, noisy 90m2 apartment as a family of 6, we don't have much space to accumulate things.

Everytime I had to let go, I felt so displaced. It felt desolate and lonely. But because I had to let go completely, I had to create comfortable world within the new world in a hurry to stop feeling lonely. By doing so, I had no room to worry about keeping in touch with my past. What fit best with now? What mattered for me and my son's future? And that is how I ended up choosing where I am now. Maybe it can't even be called choosing. It was series of relatively easy selection process. If there was a rule in starting over, it would be to stay as true to my heart as possible. What is right or wrong by world's standard is "more like a guideline". What felt right for me meant whether my course of action would help someone grow, and would help myself grow.

I have been meaning to talk about this to Wyuki-san for a while now, about re-making the past experience. This is not about painting over the feelings I had in the past. It is all about learning of other factors in my life that made me who I am. In the case of starting over, each time, especially in younger years, I felt angery for having to go through it, dismayed with my fate. I just didn't know at that time it was a valuble lesson I was learning, in how to let go, how to make the best out of what has been given me.

My friend, not having had such experience as I did, would find it hard to take that one step to start over. First, he has to let go of the past and the present that is the continuation of the past.

My coaching friends and I talk about ... coaching. Would my story help someone in starting over? Would it matter?

Point of view

It's all relative. I was a bit worried with my skewed way of looking at things lately, but then its just a point of view. Fun to see things in a different way.

In Nob's blog, I recently came upon an entry on Michael Jackson. I've shared it with several people around me, and most people commented on how he looked, how he was tried and found guilty.

I thought of how many people made lots of money off of him. His managers. People who sold things to him. His lawyers. Musicians who played with him. Song writers. Music companies. Surgeons. The list is long. I thought of how these people might have thought in terms of their bank account savings, maybe not in term of Michael Jackson's personal happiness.

I thought of how much l enjoyed his music and music videos. He could really sing. He could really dance. Will he have any chance to find his true happiness? Maybe he already has it. What life he had so far! What life he still will have because people will keep talking about him so long as he does something, anything to get on the news. Whatever he does, he will have plenty of people around him who thinks in term of money.

I thought of how in today's science and technology, despite of best of plastic surgery, he could not stay beautiful, he could not stay young. In his 40 odd years of life, he went through painful surgeries for looks that was to satisfy his fans. If he lives on to be normal old age, say 80 something, unless there is new scientific progress, he will be just as old and look as old as any other 80 something year old man. I am a normal human being. I am not happy about how my age shows in my appearance. But seeing Michael Jackson in his current state made me think of what most of us suffers from, from growing old. It kind of cured me from being upset about growing old. Accept it, and life becomes sweeter.

Then, with the family, I watched a TV show, a program on Discovery Channel shown on a Japanese TV show. It was about a man who hijacked an airplane in US back in the 70's. He was a Vietman War Green Berret veteran. He hijacked a commercial airplane going from Newark to Los Angeles. He only asked for 500,000 dollars. He got the money, he escaped. Nobody was hurt, nobody was killed. He got caught, but at the time, he had not used the money at all. He then went to jail, escaped with several innmates. Other innmates robbed banks, and was eventually caught He also was found leter, but when he was found, there was shootout, and he died by a gunshot.

The story was told in a way that described him as a truly evil man.

I thought of how he might have had to kill innocent people during the war. I found it strange that how he never shot anybody, never wounded anybody in process of hijacking and jail escaping. I thought of how people who decide to go into war is never jailed if they were victorious. I thought of how some people do underhanded business for millions of dollars and are covered with minimum press news story.

Why was this man shown as so evil? All these Holywood movies makes people who kill, who steal as heroes. Why then is this man evil?

I thought, I wonder how many people thought this way? Maybe many. Maybe few.

It's all point of view.

Learning from my sensei

Tonight, I had dinner with one of my favorite Senseis. He is an executive at a globally prestigious company. I have known him for two years now, and I meet with him only about three times a year. Yet every time I talk to him, I learn things I can't from books or other people.

Sensei doesn't read much. He learns from intensely observing the world around him, capturing images in flash, contemplating deeply on information he gained through his five senses, relying heavily on visual images. I really admire the way he thinks, the insight he acquires from observation. It seems that he sees the world as they truly are, instead of being lead away from reality by words that are not precise or untrue.

Sensei told me of his latest thoughts on business management. He said he never liked consultants, and he still doesn't feel entirely comfortable with the new development of his thoughts. But, he feels it is the way he must pursue to innovate his company. That is, a company may have very deep knowledge about whatever that is relevant to their products, but the situation now is that many companies do not have the capability to innovate, capability of how to interpret what the customers are saying, what the business partners are saying. That is where consultants come in. Consulting companies that have proven method of drawing out these issues and interpreting them in real and correct way are highly valuable. Sensei felt that many companies work with consultants with such methods in order to learn where they stand now, in order to learn these methods and integrate them into their work process. And through this collaboration, consultants will gain further insight and learn to develop better method and process and help other clients as well. Hiring consultants will only work if it produces win-win result. Sensei is vigorously working to integrate such system into his company.

We talked about Gorin-no-sho, and The Day Seagull Soared. About Gorin-no-sho, Sensei commented, well, you know they say that the book was written by Miyamoto Musashi. But the concepts in Gorin-no-sho "feels" to him as though something out of late Edo-era school of thinking. I commented, well, it is a known fact that the original Gorin-no-sho written by Miyamoto Musashi does not exist, and it is also a known fact that the Gorin-no-sho known by all today was written three generations after Musashi's death by Musashi's deciple's lienage. Three generations after Miyamoto Musashi brings the era to the smack in the middle of the Edo era. So my mind churns. Edo era's samurai concept may have seed of Miyamoto Musashi, but maybe he never wrote Gorin-no-sho?

When we were talking of how what people say and what people do are two different things, I told Sensei of what I read today on The Day Seagull Soared. How Marxism was so hot among college students after the end of World War, and as General MacArthur disbanded zaibatsu and freed feudal landlords' lands to peasants, with intension of promoting democracy in Japan, students movements with strikes and boycotts affected the Japanese government in their employment laws and policies. Sensei said, the socialism system makes a country efficient for production and that may have been good, but for other matters, Japanese government probably wanted to do things in different ways. Then I commented, I guess they had to obey MacArther, because after all, Japan did lose the war. Now that I think about it, maybe as a country, Japan might have been ripe for Marxism, but the Americans prevention worked.

Sensei's sense of humor, clear view of the world, candid speech always give me so much to think about, so much to learn. Since I rely heavily on reading books to think, to learn, I am fascinated of his ability to learn strictly from observation, and I admire him so precisely because he is so different from me, from anybody else I know. I am so fortunate for having met him in my life.