what's a good life?
conversations with an in-house anthropologist
Hello reader, thanks for being here! I’m Kana and this is Tending Gardens, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.
plum and rainy season
Officially rainy season in Kamikatsu! At the end of May, there was a long period of continuous rain, but since then there have been patches of sun. The rain makes hanging and drying laundry a nearly impossible task and bugs and other critters seem to come alive with the surplus of rain, but my oh my does Kamikatsu look dreamy in the rain and midst.
The rainy season in Japan is called tsuyu (梅雨). The first character is ‘plum’ because rainy season coincides with the season of plums ripening. Speaking of plums…! I am going to try to make my own plum wine (梅酒), which is a Japanese liqueur made by steeping fresh Japanese plum (ume) in liquor and sugar.
I always love to share how I’m experiencing the change of season, both by the weather transformations and the produce that is available. In the countryside, particularly, the food that’s in season is so strongly tied with people’s sense of time.
living with an anthropologist
I’ve been lucky to have some incredible roommates over the course of my many shared living experiences. I’ve learned so much from sharing a house with people who have different backgrounds, interests, and cultures. I’ve also had some challenging shared house experience (cue the story about living in a shared house with 6 girls and 2 guys in the middle of the woods), but that’s not a story for now.
I currently share my home with a research student from California, studying in Norway. Kamikatsu seems to draw some of the most fascinating and international people that I sometimes forget that I’m in a very rural place with a population of fewer than 1,500 people.
My roommate is an anthropologist, she studies aspects of humans and societies, connecting realities of past and present. Her research focuses on the revitalization of satoyama to reframe depopulated communities. She’s speaking with a wide spectrum of people—from young and eager former city dwellers who started a ‘new life’ in the countryside to elderly grandma’s and grandpa’s who have never left Kamikatsu. The elderly can talk about what it was like to grow up in the town and their observations on the changes over time.
I have the joy of discussing thoughts, ideas and research with my roommate over morning coffees and shared dinners. It’s exciting to be adjacent to her research and see themes emerge from her conversations with the local people. I feel like I get to be engaged in thinking and “doing” research, without actually writing, transcribing or doing a dreadful literature review. Win!
what’s a good life?
Tied to my roommate’s exploratory research, she asked me recently, “What’s a good life?” While her research focuses on rural revitalization and the symbiotic relations between humans and nature, she also is looking at many aspects of daily life and well-being.
So the question (“what’s a good life?”) has been on my mind lately—it’s something I’ve been thinking about on my long bicycle rides and a topic I’ve been asking those around me.
It’s true that this is probably one of the oldest philosophical questions, so it’s nothing “new” to think about how one should live or what it means to “live well”. There are so many reoccurring themes in what I write, but I really do think that aspects of a good life come from having health, balance, and purpose.
Having health is more than the physical state, but being conscious about the state of our mental, emotional, and social health. “Health is the most important thing”, was a mantra that was preached in my house. Even in the busiest or most stressful of times in my life, my mom’s voice in my head always reminded me that health is the foundation upon which everything else is built upon.
I also think building and maintaining relationships, fostering community, engaging in purposeful work, serving others, and the physical environment are essential aspects of a good life. A good life is being able to appreciate life’s joys—to be conscious of the arrival of beauty and to “be here now”. For me, a good life is being able to find peace in hard moments and accept the impermanence of everything.
Viktor Frankl, wrote in his 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
A “good life” in list form:
Stargazing
Cloud gazing
Spending time with my sister, family, and friends
Hiking long trails
Languages
Mountains
Ocean/sea/lakes
Nature documentaries
Campfires
Cooking
Japanese curry
Letter-writing
Yoga
Philosophy
Poetry
What would your list look like?
Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead.
Take care,
Kana
I’d love for you to think of me as your penpal—sharing a note from a tiny village in Japan. With Tending Gardens, I want to bring you a small joy in the form of a newsletter. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.