monkey see mokey do
I try to live without expectations.
It's not as hard to do as it may seem at first. Of course it's almost impossible to have no expectations at all, but it's quite easy to seize them down to minimum. To some people it comes more natural than to others, and how good are you at the task is probably measured equally by talent and by the number of major disappointments you've experienced so far. At some point you realize it's better to let yourself be positively surprised than to be sad over something that was supposed to happen - and didn't.
In a way this is not far from ancient Epicurean philosophy. It is commonly thought that Epicure's thought was built around doing whatever you wanted to keep yourself happy. It's very shortsighted, and Epicure was smarter than that. Keep happy, of course, but that's by keeping your life simple, enjoying the smallest things, and avoiding sadness.
Personally I'm probably way to cynical to be truly Epicurean. Plus I'm a female, which means at least once every month I'm forced to throw all that 'enjoy the smallest things' hippie talk outside the window, curl in my bed and use bad language in undertone, so that no one would see or hear me.
By the way, that was my plan for today, until a call came from my boss-to-be, telling me to pack my laptop and come to Shinjuku, cause there's a place we might make our office. The place was a no-go, my laptop turned out to be dead (why, Jennifer, why?!) and the only place we've found that allowed plugging it in had no wi-fi. But I learnt he was going to hire a Japanese person to help me after all, and that he did not expect me to keep track of tax law, etc., at least not right away.
This makes me at ease.
This makes me actually expect things to turn out alright. Which is a crime against my policy of not expecting anything, but I don't feel very guilty about it.
After all this is what will keep me here, and that in turn - makes me THE proudest monkey you've ever seen. Can you understand that feeling?
It's not as hard to do as it may seem at first. Of course it's almost impossible to have no expectations at all, but it's quite easy to seize them down to minimum. To some people it comes more natural than to others, and how good are you at the task is probably measured equally by talent and by the number of major disappointments you've experienced so far. At some point you realize it's better to let yourself be positively surprised than to be sad over something that was supposed to happen - and didn't.
In a way this is not far from ancient Epicurean philosophy. It is commonly thought that Epicure's thought was built around doing whatever you wanted to keep yourself happy. It's very shortsighted, and Epicure was smarter than that. Keep happy, of course, but that's by keeping your life simple, enjoying the smallest things, and avoiding sadness.
Personally I'm probably way to cynical to be truly Epicurean. Plus I'm a female, which means at least once every month I'm forced to throw all that 'enjoy the smallest things' hippie talk outside the window, curl in my bed and use bad language in undertone, so that no one would see or hear me.
By the way, that was my plan for today, until a call came from my boss-to-be, telling me to pack my laptop and come to Shinjuku, cause there's a place we might make our office. The place was a no-go, my laptop turned out to be dead (why, Jennifer, why?!) and the only place we've found that allowed plugging it in had no wi-fi. But I learnt he was going to hire a Japanese person to help me after all, and that he did not expect me to keep track of tax law, etc., at least not right away.
This makes me at ease.
This makes me actually expect things to turn out alright. Which is a crime against my policy of not expecting anything, but I don't feel very guilty about it.
After all this is what will keep me here, and that in turn - makes me THE proudest monkey you've ever seen. Can you understand that feeling?