2010 has been a tumultuous and excited year for this little blogger. Among the many things I was able to accomplish and am grateful, I appreciate the opportunity to study abroad, a major life goal achieved. Japan was a learning process: personality quirks and traits were revealed, my understanding of my surrounding environment broadened a little, more cultural awareness and communication improved! I successfully navigated my first traumatic event, tragic heartbreak, and subsequent depression, with psychiatric help. I helped shakubuku an "at-risk youth," and finished my first ever million daimoku chart!
Again, as at the end of every semester I have experienced to date, it has become clear to me just how much the people around me support and care for me. To those whom I speak to or see daily, I thank them. To those whom I am physically separated, my love and support has not wavered, I wish and pray for their happiness and success all the same.
I don't regret anything that I did, happened to me, or happened around me this past year. Nor do I regret the interactions I had with the people in my life this year, perhaps to some one's dismay.
My only hope for 2011 is that my existence alone can inspire pleasant and motivating feelings in those around me. Hopefully everything will go well for more people in 2011 than the amount of people who didn't have things in their favor in 2010.
"We were born to struggle and challenge ourselves. We were born to progress in our lives and to win. This is the meaning of a life dedicated to happiness and peace. The purpose of life is being victorious. And the key to victory is chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo." Josei Toda
December 25, 2010
November 01, 2010
Unappreciation
Unappreciation: un·ap·pre·ci·a·tion, noun, \ˌən-ə-ˌprē-shē-ˈā-shən\
1. failure to appreciate something
2. ungratefully: in an ungrateful manner
Many, many times I have walked into a museum and considered this sculpture or that painting beautiful. I can also appreciate the beauty I find in Jake Gyllenhaal's face and body and thus patronize his movies more often than say, Clint Eastwood. Perhaps the reader has had a similar experience of finding value in some trait or characteristic of a person or object.
Now, I have found it difficult to find value in myself as easily as I find it in others. If we can't appreciate ourselves, how can we ever appreciate someone else or expect someone else to appreciate us as individuals? We all have our individual strengths and weaknesses, beauty and ugliness.
If I find my especially good characteristics and emphasize them, then perhaps someone else will notice, enjoy and appreciate them as well.
1. failure to appreciate something
2. ungratefully: in an ungrateful manner
Many, many times I have walked into a museum and considered this sculpture or that painting beautiful. I can also appreciate the beauty I find in Jake Gyllenhaal's face and body and thus patronize his movies more often than say, Clint Eastwood. Perhaps the reader has had a similar experience of finding value in some trait or characteristic of a person or object.
Now, I have found it difficult to find value in myself as easily as I find it in others. If we can't appreciate ourselves, how can we ever appreciate someone else or expect someone else to appreciate us as individuals? We all have our individual strengths and weaknesses, beauty and ugliness.
If I find my especially good characteristics and emphasize them, then perhaps someone else will notice, enjoy and appreciate them as well.
October 05, 2010
Honesty
There comes a point in a young person's life where he must accept everything that happened to him. I've reached that point. It's time I understand the experiences I've had and decide what I'm going to take forward with me, at least in the immediate future. Soon, this won't just be in a physical possessions and memory evidence sense.
Those things are rather fleeting, but the things that stay with us, at least stay with me, are the decisions I've made, the things I've done to the people around me and the experiences I chose or fell into in the course of events that compose my life.
It's easy to put something, some memory, some idea in the back of my mind and hope it stays there. Eventually, that pile of crap I stored in the far corner of the attic need to be sifted through. When I open that dusty box, the contents are just shadows of the original. It takes time to digest and understand what it is I'm holding in my hand: "is it a shirt? or a banner? Oh, wait, what did I use this for again?" It's all very familiar but ephemeral, dream-like, intangible.
Recently, I opened one of those boxes dirty and taped up boxes. It didn't make sense to me what I was looking at. Literally, I saw a dark cloud that was threatening to rain inside the box. Slowly, I pulled apart the layers and could see the mangled truth.
It feels good to put that irritant into a box, push it to the back of the pile and face the other side of the room. But eventually, it needs to be opened. There's no other option. The longer we wait, the more we put off rediscovering the contents, the bigger the box gets, the more mold it builds, the more brutal and dangerous the storm becomes. Have that storm knock down bushes, not telephone poles.
Those things are rather fleeting, but the things that stay with us, at least stay with me, are the decisions I've made, the things I've done to the people around me and the experiences I chose or fell into in the course of events that compose my life.
It's easy to put something, some memory, some idea in the back of my mind and hope it stays there. Eventually, that pile of crap I stored in the far corner of the attic need to be sifted through. When I open that dusty box, the contents are just shadows of the original. It takes time to digest and understand what it is I'm holding in my hand: "is it a shirt? or a banner? Oh, wait, what did I use this for again?" It's all very familiar but ephemeral, dream-like, intangible.
Recently, I opened one of those boxes dirty and taped up boxes. It didn't make sense to me what I was looking at. Literally, I saw a dark cloud that was threatening to rain inside the box. Slowly, I pulled apart the layers and could see the mangled truth.
It feels good to put that irritant into a box, push it to the back of the pile and face the other side of the room. But eventually, it needs to be opened. There's no other option. The longer we wait, the more we put off rediscovering the contents, the bigger the box gets, the more mold it builds, the more brutal and dangerous the storm becomes. Have that storm knock down bushes, not telephone poles.
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