Speaker 1: We can live much more deeply connected lives, but we
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to do it. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Wolfe thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Andy Couturier, who spent
Speaker 1: four years studying sustainable living in rural Japan. There he
Speaker 1: worked with local environments, wrote for the Japan Times, and
Speaker 1: studied how Japanese aesthetics can help us develop new forms
Speaker 1: of writing. Andy has also hitchhiked across the Sahara Desert,
Speaker 1: been a researcher for Greenpeace, built his own house with
Speaker 1: hand tools and taught intuitive writing for more than two decades.
Speaker 1: He's a student of many different Asian philosophical systems and
Speaker 1: is fluent in Japanese. His book is The Abundance of
Speaker 1: less Lessons and Simple Living from Rural Japan. This episode
Speaker 1: is brought to you by health i Q. To see
Speaker 1: if you qualify and get your free health quote, go
Speaker 1: to health i q dot com. Slash wolf or mentioned
Speaker 1: the promo code wolf and you talk to a health
Speaker 1: hike you agent. And here's the interview with Andy Couturier. Hi, Andy,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, really glad
Speaker 1: to be here. I'm happy to have you on. Your
Speaker 1: book is called The Abundance of less Lessons and Simple
Speaker 1: Living from Rural Japan, and it's a fascinating book about
Speaker 1: a group of people who have chosen a different way
Speaker 1: to live, and I think there's a lot of lessons
Speaker 1: for all of us in it. We'll get to that
Speaker 1: in a minute, but let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second. He looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well, it's a very interesting parable, and I
Speaker 1: think it's very true in terms of our consciousness, um.
Speaker 1: But also I'm interested in this idea of always at
Speaker 1: battle um. And you know, we can't fail to notice
Speaker 1: that there's a male, young male and an older male.
Speaker 1: And I thought about the people that I wrote about
Speaker 1: in the Abundance of Lesson. I thought, Wow, they don't
Speaker 1: really seem to be in this state of struggle. Um.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem to be going on for them. And
Speaker 1: yet the same time, they've made very conscious choices to
Speaker 1: move away from consumerism. And greed is one of the
Speaker 1: keywords you use there, and I thought it's a powerful word,
Speaker 1: but it's also a tricky word. And it's an obvious
Speaker 1: thing when you say, think about someone taking from a child,
Speaker 1: or taking something from a poor person, or a landlord
Speaker 1: raising rent, or someone maximizing the return on investment on
Speaker 1: their stock portfolio. But one of the people I wrote
Speaker 1: about said is he said the farmer, he said, don't
Speaker 1: be greedy with the soil. Realize what it's actual fertility is,
Speaker 1: and then you'll have a stable harvest from year to year.
Speaker 1: And so for me, I realized that even as an
Speaker 1: organic gardener that grows some of my own food, that
Speaker 1: indeed I had had that greed with the soil, what
Speaker 1: how can I maximize my productions? So to me, on
Speaker 1: some level, there's the things we feed consciously are the
Speaker 1: sort of easy stuff. It's the things that we the
Speaker 1: bad wolf in that language that you use, that we
Speaker 1: feed subliminally without even noticing it. That's what's sort of
Speaker 1: most important, I think, because I think a lot of
Speaker 1: those things are the things that are are driving us
Speaker 1: and um and by meeting these people, at first I
Speaker 1: thought they were just vindicating my own pre held beliefs,
Speaker 1: but in fact, um they were. They challenged me on
Speaker 1: many levels so that I actually had to see where
Speaker 1: I was being, just, for example, greedy without even knowing it.
Speaker 1: That's a great start and a great way to kick
Speaker 1: things off. Why don't you tell listeners a little bit
Speaker 1: about the premise or the setup of the book and
Speaker 1: then we can get more specific from there. Sure well, Um,
Speaker 1: I was living in world Japan, Um, I've always loved
Speaker 1: the countryside in the early nineties, and just by chance
Speaker 1: doing some environmental activism, I met some people. Originally one
Speaker 1: woman who is a anti nuclear activist UM back in
Speaker 1: twenty or more years before Fukushima, and she was very
Speaker 1: forthright and she was not afraid of challenging me, and
Speaker 1: we became great friends, and she invited us, my partner Cynthia,
Speaker 1: and I up to her homestead in the mountains. And
Speaker 1: the funny thing is is we were in Japan earning
Speaker 1: money because what we wanted to do is is to
Speaker 1: earn enough money to buy some land in uh northern
Speaker 1: California when we came back to the States and grow
Speaker 1: our own food and build our own house. We had
Speaker 1: already had that idea, and but we had no idea
Speaker 1: that anyone was doing that in Japan. And when we
Speaker 1: went up there, not only was just physically so beautiful,
Speaker 1: these terraced rice paddies where people have planted vegetables and
Speaker 1: flowers and fruit trees uh and the old farmhouses dotting
Speaker 1: the hillside and the cedar forests and many of the
Speaker 1: um otsuko. As a woman, her and her friends were
Speaker 1: living in these old farmhouses, many hundreds of years old
Speaker 1: and for almost no rent. I realized that these people
Speaker 1: were not just my cliche idea back to the Landers,
Speaker 1: but they were living this profoundly connected life. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just sort of that hippie ideal of grow your
Speaker 1: own food, but that it was connected in so many
Speaker 1: different ways to traditional Japan. But also very intriguingly, they're
Speaker 1: living overseas in India and Nepal and sometimes to meet
Speaker 1: in China, connecting in with those well springs of Buddhist
Speaker 1: and Hindu thought and bringing them to actuality in their
Speaker 1: day to day lives. And so I thought my Japanese
Speaker 1: got better and better at speaking to them in Japanese.
Speaker 1: I realized these are very profound thinkers, and that they
Speaker 1: figured out some things that I think will help a
Speaker 1: lot of people in the West who are suffering and
Speaker 1: can't figure their way out and so that started me
Speaker 1: feeling that it was important to write a book about
Speaker 1: them so that other people who don't have the luxury
Speaker 1: or privilege to live overseas or speech Japanese could meet
Speaker 1: them and learn there. I don't want to call them secrets,
Speaker 1: learn learning these in some ways obvious pieces of wisdom
Speaker 1: that we've gotten so alienated from, just from the way
Speaker 1: we live every day. Yeah. Right in the title, you
Speaker 1: you can refer to them as lessons, and I think
Speaker 1: that's an interesting way to look at them. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that you mentioned about the people is
Speaker 1: that as one of the defining characteristics is that they
Speaker 1: do not use money to entertain themselves. Talk to me
Speaker 1: a little bit about their lifestyles and what does entertainment
Speaker 1: mean to them. It's very different in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways than what we would think of as entertainment. That's
Speaker 1: a great question, and I think that's a key point
Speaker 1: is that they are not necessarily going you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: if you live in New York, you can go to
Speaker 1: the Kennedy Center and see opera, or even if you're
Speaker 1: connected the internet, you can stream Netflix. And it's not
Speaker 1: that nobody does that. And you know, I don't do
Speaker 1: that or that that's necessarily a bad thing. But in
Speaker 1: many ways, UM, whether it's the drama of growing your
Speaker 1: own food and or um just the connection with the
Speaker 1: natural world or um. In many cases you're simply getting
Speaker 1: books out of the library and reading them. It's not
Speaker 1: so much about pushing play whatever that is pushing the
Speaker 1: button on the remote and and having um know and
Speaker 1: industrialized culture deliver you something that makes you laugh or
Speaker 1: cry or um distract you that actually, UM. A lot
Speaker 1: of the ways of thinking that we have that are
Speaker 1: unsustainable are based in industrialized production methods that we buy
Speaker 1: into because of just the way we thought, we think,
Speaker 1: and we all have grown up in such a world
Speaker 1: of mechanical reproduction of objects that we just purchased. So
Speaker 1: in terms of their way of life, I do actually
Speaker 1: prefer the word way of life to lifestyle because lifestyle
Speaker 1: style sounds a little bit more like a fashion. But
Speaker 1: either where do you use uh. Their way of life
Speaker 1: is slow, it's humble, UH, it's peaceful, it's connected to
Speaker 1: their community, it's um connected to their own time for contemplation.
Speaker 1: I would say that's the key word is is that
Speaker 1: they're not suffering time poverty, which is a term I
Speaker 1: read somewhere time poverty is when you just have no
Speaker 1: time for anything anymore because you're so rushed. These are
Speaker 1: people who have this rich amount of time for contemplation,
Speaker 1: or for making their own art, or for spending time
Speaker 1: with their kids. And that's true even of the dads,
Speaker 1: which if you know anything about Japan, many times dad's
Speaker 1: may only see their kids on Sundays or Sunday afternoons,
Speaker 1: or they may be living in a different city, and
Speaker 1: and the chance to really connect with their children is
Speaker 1: it's not really entertainment either. It's it's just all life
Speaker 1: is connected, it's not separated into work and play. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's more to say about their way of life, but
Speaker 1: I don't want to make the answer too long. There's
Speaker 1: a quote that you give from Nakamura. Did I say
Speaker 1: his name right? Yes? He says, if you have time,
Speaker 1: many things are enjoyable, which is just a fascinating idea.
Speaker 1: And you talk about how in your own life, when
Speaker 1: you're rushing around and everything is is so hectic, you know,
Speaker 1: you sort of see the true source of your misery,
Speaker 1: and it's this idea of that a lot of things
Speaker 1: are unpleasant for us because we view them as we've
Speaker 1: got to get them out of the way to get
Speaker 1: to the next thing and the next thing. And what
Speaker 1: it looks like a lot of the people that you
Speaker 1: were talking with are doing is they don't have so
Speaker 1: many things to do, so they are able to spend
Speaker 1: more time on the basic things that we do to
Speaker 1: stay alive. And they garner a great deal of enjoyment
Speaker 1: and satisfaction out of doing those things. That is, in
Speaker 1: a way not entertainment, but it's a it's a deeply
Speaker 1: satisfying part of their life and what they consider to
Speaker 1: be important. Fantastic way of saying. And I don't think
Speaker 1: I could even improve on that at all. I guess
Speaker 1: I would just go from there. Is so, well, if
Speaker 1: that sounds great, how do we get there? And um,
Speaker 1: I think we particularly now with the internet culture, we're
Speaker 1: used to these five quick hacks to a more sustainable
Speaker 1: life for you know, better inner peace, and well, those
Speaker 1: things are valuable on another level. Really, it's not just
Speaker 1: about you know, making a little tweak here and they're
Speaker 1: putting solar panels on the house or driving a more
Speaker 1: efficient car, changing lightbulbs out. Um that it's about really
Speaker 1: re orienting ourselves towards consumerism, and if we're rushed, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to do. If we're constantly busy, everyone says, oh,
Speaker 1: the holidays are crazy, or this this crazy, or my
Speaker 1: schedule is crazy, as if someone did that to them.
Speaker 1: And certainly there are people all of the world who
Speaker 1: don't have the options that many people in the industrialized
Speaker 1: West have. But I think a lot of it is
Speaker 1: we have all these options, yet we still don't realize
Speaker 1: that we're chasing after that shimera of like all my
Speaker 1: life needs to be enjoyed noble and I need to
Speaker 1: have it comfortable at all times. And in fact, we
Speaker 1: can live much more deeply connected lives, but we have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do it. And I use
Speaker 1: the word figure out the term figure out because sometimes
Speaker 1: it's really just about thinking our way out, and to
Speaker 1: do that we need to make time. So I always
Speaker 1: recommend to people when they asked me, how do you
Speaker 1: do this, is did really take some time out of
Speaker 1: your um your life, even if you can do a
Speaker 1: whole day or three day retreat where you really think
Speaker 1: about how you let your life get set up. Are
Speaker 1: the choices you've made and how that rush has brought
Speaker 1: you to a place of constant sense of lack of
Speaker 1: time and I really need, I really need, I really need,
Speaker 1: and and then trying to fill that with convenient devices
Speaker 1: that will give you back your time, when in fact
Speaker 1: is as Usha Amimia, one of the people in the
Speaker 1: book said, she said, convenience just speeds you up. And
Speaker 1: that was one of those moments for you when I
Speaker 1: realized that it was actually my subliminal belief that all
Speaker 1: I needed to do was get something, you know, designed
Speaker 1: the system then here, and then I would be happier,
Speaker 1: We'll have more time. And in fact it's the opposite
Speaker 1: that I'm using on these devices just to cram more
Speaker 1: into my day. And here's the rest of the interview
Speaker 1: with Andy Couturier. There's a lot of circling around that
Speaker 1: theme of time in the book. I'd say it's one
Speaker 1: of the big ones of of not trading things for time.
Speaker 1: That's one that Atsuko, she says, most people have directed
Speaker 1: their attention towards having things more than time, and that's
Speaker 1: why they are always running. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that you mentioned in the book, and I think it
Speaker 1: it gets at the heart of what you were just
Speaker 1: saying a minute ago about well, is this just a
Speaker 1: small tweak here there? What is this? You were doing
Speaker 1: an interview with somebody else and they refer to the
Speaker 1: people in your book as the Olympic Athletes of simplicity,
Speaker 1: and when you read your book, what those people are
Speaker 1: doing is very I don't know if I want to
Speaker 1: use the word extreme, but it is a far cry
Speaker 1: from the way most of us in the West live
Speaker 1: our lives. It's a pretty big distance between our life
Speaker 1: today and their life. And I'm interested in your ideas
Speaker 1: on maybe it's not a small tweak, but what are
Speaker 1: the ways that we make meaningful strides in that direction?
Speaker 1: Knowing that most of us aren't going to necessarily go
Speaker 1: from the current life we live today towards living in
Speaker 1: the country, growing our own food and making our own
Speaker 1: furniture or whatever whatever it might be. So I'm always
Speaker 1: interested in, you know, I talk a lot on the
Speaker 1: show about the middle way, about you know, one extreme
Speaker 1: versus the other extreme, and I'm just curious about how
Speaker 1: do we take meaningful steps in that direction. So one
Speaker 1: of them is time. Are there other things that you
Speaker 1: recommend or think of. I'm just I'm sort of wondering
Speaker 1: about this whole level because the distance seems so great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to say that I don't live the
Speaker 1: way that they do, but I have over the time
Speaker 1: that I've met them. In the first sentences book was
Speaker 1: written twenty seven years ago, UM moved more and more
Speaker 1: in that direction, you know, less media consumption or more
Speaker 1: time rereading a particular book or listening to the recording
Speaker 1: of a poem again again and getting deeper into the
Speaker 1: experience of what that is. And yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, if they were to look at, say, the
Speaker 1: Nepali villagers that they lived with in the Himalayas, some
Speaker 1: of them lived um for a couple of years or
Speaker 1: more in their youth in these um rural places, they
Speaker 1: might feel like, well, there's a really huge distance between
Speaker 1: that way of life and the way I'm living now
Speaker 1: with a car, for example, or buying some of my
Speaker 1: food at the grocery store. So UM, I think the
Speaker 1: real answer is it's not for me to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the way to do it, I think, and
Speaker 1: I can give some pointers, but I wanted to start
Speaker 1: before I do that, saying that this is the modern
Speaker 1: conundrum of credible resource use. UM, the suffering that that
Speaker 1: causes to the planet. People, UM say in a sweatshop
Speaker 1: in China. You know, it's very real. We have to
Speaker 1: I feel we really have to think our way out
Speaker 1: of it, both as a culture and in terms of
Speaker 1: our laws, but also just individually. How do we stop
Speaker 1: participating in things that we don't believe in? And and
Speaker 1: maybe maybe there is a larger change, um that people
Speaker 1: will feel motivated to make. And um, certainly a number
Speaker 1: of people who've read my book have written to me
Speaker 1: and I said, you know, it really changed my life.
Speaker 1: I decided to leave the corporate grind and live a
Speaker 1: lot simpler and live in a smaller house, and and
Speaker 1: I'm so much happier, and thank you for writing the book.
Speaker 1: So I do want to say that it is possible
Speaker 1: to make large changes, but sometimes it's easier just to
Speaker 1: get started. Um. I would say, just to think about
Speaker 1: in what ways you are creating, as I said in
Speaker 1: the book, misery for yourself, by the way I'm creating
Speaker 1: misery for myself rushing through things and think is there
Speaker 1: another way to do this? Do I need to be
Speaker 1: in touch with everybody who writes me by email within
Speaker 1: an hour, within a day. Am I wrong person? If
Speaker 1: I'm not dressed in the finest studs? I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of ways in which we've been conned into
Speaker 1: consuming a lot, rushing a lot, and missing a lot
Speaker 1: of what's happening in our lives. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times when people have, for example, a health
Speaker 1: crisis or brush with death, they wake up to that,
Speaker 1: and um, maybe we don't need to have a brush
Speaker 1: with death to wake up to like, how are we living?
Speaker 1: Do we want to spend more time with ourselves? Do
Speaker 1: we want to spend more time with our family? You know?
Speaker 1: Do we have lunch with a friend for forty five
Speaker 1: minutes in the middle of a hectic work week and
Speaker 1: how did that happen? You know? When we really want
Speaker 1: to spend three or four hours with a friend and
Speaker 1: really hear about their heartaches and their joys and what
Speaker 1: they've learned and where their growth points are. So both
Speaker 1: I simplify, simplify. I now live in a studio apartment
Speaker 1: with my partner and the dog, and I have my
Speaker 1: closeye office for writing and teaching writing here, and we
Speaker 1: used to live it in one bedroom and before that
Speaker 1: a two bedroom, and each step has actually made me
Speaker 1: much happier. It's less to deal with. Um. When I
Speaker 1: stopped traveling so much, I got to know my own
Speaker 1: town better. When I decided that really one of my
Speaker 1: priorities is having long conversations with friends. I found the
Speaker 1: friends who also wanted that, and because I was doing that,
Speaker 1: I wasn't out there, um, you know, filling my shopping
Speaker 1: basket in order to staunch this horrible sense of alienation
Speaker 1: that I think we all sometimes feel. That's a great answer.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of themes I think also that we
Speaker 1: can pull out from the book that are in the
Speaker 1: vein of what we're talking about, and one of them
Speaker 1: is what you mentioned part way through the last answer,
Speaker 1: which was rereading certain things focusing on a poem. You
Speaker 1: talk in the book about a musician who has played
Speaker 1: the same seven songs on his I'm going to call
Speaker 1: it a flute. That's not the right thing, but you
Speaker 1: can give us flute, is right. It's a large bamboo flute, Okay.
Speaker 1: You know continued to play those same seven songs. So
Speaker 1: there's a idea of going deeper into things in this
Speaker 1: way of life, and you could talk about that from
Speaker 1: the perspective of a book, a poem, a piece of music,
Speaker 1: or a lot of the people are using their hands
Speaker 1: to make something, and they're they're doing that in a
Speaker 1: very methodical and thoughtful way. It's another way of going
Speaker 1: deeper into something than what a lot of us do.
Speaker 1: And so that points me as another direction that we
Speaker 1: could all look at to simplify our lives and to
Speaker 1: deepen our lives is to do, you know, those kind
Speaker 1: of things that you just mentioned. I was visiting my
Speaker 1: mother in Washington, d C. This past summer and I
Speaker 1: went to the Folk Arts Festival, and I thought I
Speaker 1: would see, you know, wood carving and fiddle playing, but
Speaker 1: turned out that the focus was on circus arts and
Speaker 1: it was like little workshops on juggling and um clowning
Speaker 1: and things like that. And the person there was talking
Speaker 1: about the difference between they did some research on people
Speaker 1: who were circuits arts performers or people who are just
Speaker 1: studying it and spent you know, many many hours of
Speaker 1: their days doing that versus um what's known as gamers,
Speaker 1: people who spend a lot of time in front of
Speaker 1: a computer screen. And I there's nothing in the book
Speaker 1: that judges people for their choices. So I don't want
Speaker 1: this um answer to your question to be uh judgmental
Speaker 1: of people who do gaming. But just if you think about, say, juggling,
Speaker 1: and they talked about you know, kids who do each
Speaker 1: of those, and what their lives are like, what their
Speaker 1: brains are like, and what their satisfaction is like, and
Speaker 1: as you might expect doing things with your own hands
Speaker 1: and juggling is it turns out to be a lot
Speaker 1: more sadist body. But the point I want to make
Speaker 1: is this, like say you decided, wow, I really have
Speaker 1: always been so fascinated by juggling, I'll learn how to
Speaker 1: do it. And you spend a lot of time doing that. Again,
Speaker 1: you're not besides buying your juggling balls, you know, spending
Speaker 1: a lot of money on it um, And you're interacting
Speaker 1: with your own body and your own self, and you're
Speaker 1: in many ways, uh deepening into that practice, and you're
Speaker 1: not rushing somewhere else to at the next thing to
Speaker 1: a stop you from looking at the things that you
Speaker 1: don't want to look at. So I would say that
Speaker 1: whatever it is that whoever's listening to this thinks about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I really love doing this or that think about, like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be wonderful if you could spend a lot
Speaker 1: more time doing that could be knitting, a crocheting, it
Speaker 1: could be drawing, it could be UM, interviewing people as
Speaker 1: you do, UM writing many of my writing students, you know,
Speaker 1: they get such satisfaction. And then the answer might come, well,
Speaker 1: I need to make a lot of money for my rent,
Speaker 1: or you know, I have these obligations and certain obligations.
Speaker 1: You know, one's chosen to have children, and UM, that
Speaker 1: can't be just easily changed, nor would one want them
Speaker 1: to be. But at the same time, UM, and I
Speaker 1: should bring up children later. But let's I want to
Speaker 1: finish this point. Um, there's a way that we can
Speaker 1: can deepen into fewer things. And maybe that we need
Speaker 1: to live in a cheaper place in order to do that,
Speaker 1: or we may need to have less gadgets and appliances,
Speaker 1: or um, car payments are too high, you know, drive
Speaker 1: a used car or use a bicycle, all these different
Speaker 1: ways that we can make time for what we really
Speaker 1: care about. And in the case of people who have kids,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, some of the people in the book,
Speaker 1: they couldn't send their kids to the most expensive universities
Speaker 1: in Japan. Yeah, at the same time those kids and
Speaker 1: I saw them grow up, and I interviewed some of
Speaker 1: the kids in the book. Why were they well rounded
Speaker 1: and why were they smart and connected in ways that
Speaker 1: a lot of the kids I was teaching who were
Speaker 1: on CRAM school, you know, famous university track that you
Speaker 1: hear about so much in Japan, just we're not And
Speaker 1: in many ways they ended up more satisfied as young
Speaker 1: adults in their lives, and you know they were they
Speaker 1: were still able to do what they wanted to do.
Speaker 1: So even with kids, I think that there's no requirement
Speaker 1: that you have to generate a huge amount of money.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying this conversation, I hate to be the
Speaker 1: bearer of bad news. We are nearing the end of it.
Speaker 1: I wish you could keep listening once the episode ends. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got some good news too. You can. The interview
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Speaker 1: If you pledge at the ten dollar level, you'll get
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Speaker 1: support and pledge to access this additional weekly content. And
Speaker 1: now back to the interview you mentioned before, This is
Speaker 1: not a moralizing or a judgmental thing. And when I
Speaker 1: talk about ways that we can embody some of what
Speaker 1: these people in Japan are doing, it's not from a
Speaker 1: sense of guilt or that we're living the wrong way,
Speaker 1: although looking at the environment can be a big piece
Speaker 1: of it. But one of the things you said early
Speaker 1: on in the book that really struck me was that
Speaker 1: they were living profoundly satisfied lives. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the piece that I circle back to when I look
Speaker 1: at these things and I look at what those lessons are,
Speaker 1: it's that, you know, if you look at Western culture,
Speaker 1: more and more people would say it's not a profoundly
Speaker 1: satisfying way of life. And yet these folks who have,
Speaker 1: by the standards we would consider almost nothing now they've
Speaker 1: made that that choice are living. And I think the
Speaker 1: way you say it, profoundly satisfied lives is so important,
Speaker 1: and so I wanted to echo what you were saying
Speaker 1: about a moralism or a judgmentalism, or you should do this,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, really more from if we're if
Speaker 1: we're looking at our lives today and go, well, this
Speaker 1: it's not as satisfying as I want. These are some
Speaker 1: approaches that can help. And to your point also that
Speaker 1: you made earlier, we are facing an ecological crisis and
Speaker 1: our consumers economy is definitely part of that. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: they have I'm not you know, sometimes you might write
Speaker 1: something you think back later, I'll maybe I overstated that,
Speaker 1: or I'm not sure that was true, or when I
Speaker 1: came back and met that person, they wasn't so much
Speaker 1: the case. Well, that has not been the case some
Speaker 1: of these people, as I said, I've known over a
Speaker 1: quarter of a century, and um, as they've grown older,
Speaker 1: as their kids have grown up, as changes that have happened,
Speaker 1: and even the heartbreak of the Fukushima nuclear accident or
Speaker 1: I don't even know if we can call it an accident,
Speaker 1: but um all of those things, they're still living profoundly
Speaker 1: satisfied live. So back to the question of like, well,
Speaker 1: we're not really going to make huge changes in our lives.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, someone said you could live a profoundly
Speaker 1: satisfied life. Many of us might be really willing to
Speaker 1: make huge changes, and I don't think it's necessary depending
Speaker 1: upon where you're at, um, But maybe maybe you know,
Speaker 1: if your life is totally crammed full of things that
Speaker 1: you hate doing and you're doing it in order to
Speaker 1: make money in order to buy something, may it may
Speaker 1: indeed be a huge change. Um, But that doesn't mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you make small changes along the way
Speaker 1: wherever you're at, that you can't actually get more and
Speaker 1: more of your life to be satisfying. And it's you know,
Speaker 1: my writing students sometimes say to me, oh, I need
Speaker 1: to get disciplined to write my book, And that's never
Speaker 1: my approach because it's sort of a punishing a coach. Um.
Speaker 1: I say, no one needs to discipline themselves to eat chocolate,
Speaker 1: by which I mean it's like, if you find a
Speaker 1: way of living, if you're enjoying your writing, if you're
Speaker 1: really enjoying the process, you just want to do it more.
Speaker 1: And in the same way, if you really are watching
Speaker 1: the way a broccoli plant grows and kind of trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to keep it nourished and free
Speaker 1: of bugs, and you know, when you're touching the soil
Speaker 1: and digging in it. It's just a great thing to do. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, you are actually living that satisfaction in that moment,
Speaker 1: and you'll probably want to do it more and more. Um.
Speaker 1: But I do think at the same time it's a
Speaker 1: tricky thing about the moralizing thing if the world middle class,
Speaker 1: whether that's in India or China, or Europe or the
Speaker 1: United States or Australia, is destroying the earth, and I
Speaker 1: think an argument can be made that it's not. Actually
Speaker 1: in terms of consumption. I mean, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: problems with the rich in the elites, um, but there's
Speaker 1: only so many Maserati's they can drive. There's not that
Speaker 1: many of them. It's really, in some sense, uh, it's
Speaker 1: us and the way we live. We might you know,
Speaker 1: really when we get a sobering look at you know,
Speaker 1: the loss of of elephants and rhinos and and polar bears, Like, wow,
Speaker 1: is it really that important to fly across the Atlantic
Speaker 1: five times or even more than once or twice in
Speaker 1: your life? I mean, is it really that important? So
Speaker 1: I think we can make changes and maybe it is. Um.
Speaker 1: It's it's moving towards satisfaction without blaming yourself. Because the
Speaker 1: more we strengthen that part of our brain back to
Speaker 1: the one you feed where we're doing self blame. Where
Speaker 1: does that leak out into is like I can't handle that,
Speaker 1: I need another drink or I need to you know,
Speaker 1: get away from it all, and you know, consume things
Speaker 1: in order to get away from our own negative self
Speaker 1: talk or negative self image. Yeah, exactly. The other thing
Speaker 1: that several of the people in the book mentioned, they
Speaker 1: say that this is not a return to the past.
Speaker 1: Explain what they mean by that. Well, that was a
Speaker 1: moment for me. So you know, you come up to
Speaker 1: someone's house and you see that they're cooking with wood
Speaker 1: for example, on this old style would stove, when they're
Speaker 1: living in an old house, and um, they're growing your
Speaker 1: own food. And you think, oh, yes, this is pre
Speaker 1: industrial civilization and here they are living in it and
Speaker 1: it's not even a re enactment for a theme park.
Speaker 1: They're really living this way. I thought, wow, you know
Speaker 1: you're living this way of life of the past, and
Speaker 1: they said, no, we're not. And I was confused at first.
Speaker 1: But Otsuko um watched not be the woman who I
Speaker 1: first met, who introduced me to many of the people,
Speaker 1: said I'm just a woman living a simple life in
Speaker 1: the mountains, and everything I do, I do it because
Speaker 1: it seems like that's the best way to do it,
Speaker 1: and that's the best way to use this life that
Speaker 1: I've been given and to honor it and to um,
Speaker 1: I'm not necessarily seeking after the biggest amount of pleasure,
Speaker 1: the biggest amount of comfort. So for example, in her case,
Speaker 1: she lives in the village that has a lot of
Speaker 1: forests and there's lumber mills and they just throw away
Speaker 1: all of this scrap lumber and otsico and her husband GOOFU.
Speaker 1: I just didn't want to see it go to waste,
Speaker 1: so they said, well we'll take it. And so um
Speaker 1: they use that to cook their food, and they find
Speaker 1: it fascinating to cook was fired. It's more difficult than
Speaker 1: just turning on a gas stove. Um, and yet there's
Speaker 1: a pleasure in it. And it seems it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: look at the fire and to understand fire. And so
Speaker 1: on many many levels, people are choosing what they want
Speaker 1: to do. Another example is Mr Knackamoda, who you also mentioned.
Speaker 1: He's a woodblock harbor and um, his feeling is that
Speaker 1: he wants to build. His sensitivity is aware is of
Speaker 1: all the things in the life world, is sensitivity to
Speaker 1: his own life. Um, not just because it's pleasurable, but
Speaker 1: also because he feels. He calls it his greatest safety
Speaker 1: net is you know, whenever you get into a deep trouble,
Speaker 1: whether that's your sick or maybe your end of your life,
Speaker 1: probably the best way out is having a heightened and
Speaker 1: well developed sensitivity. And so for him, making things with
Speaker 1: his own hands or trying to think his way out
Speaker 1: of problems instead of purchased products out of his problems
Speaker 1: is a way to build that sensitivity and that that
Speaker 1: pleasure in his life. So you know, that's why you
Speaker 1: see travel posters always have nature. There's this connection with
Speaker 1: nature that we want to have. UM. And even when
Speaker 1: there's pictures of cities, it's often you know, say a
Speaker 1: beautiful old building, something that's made by hand. I think
Speaker 1: there's something that gives us a lot of pleasure and
Speaker 1: enjoyment looking at it, just touching it. Just and if
Speaker 1: you learn how to make something yourself, there's a form
Speaker 1: of satisfaction that just can't be gotten any other way.
Speaker 1: I'm giving you a long answer here, but maybe one
Speaker 1: more example. UM, My partner and I are not carpenters,
Speaker 1: but we really wanted to have the experience of building
Speaker 1: our own house. And when we did return to California,
Speaker 1: we bought a piece of land that didn't have anything
Speaker 1: else on it, and we took a few carpentry classes
Speaker 1: and we did um. Everything was hand tools, And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that to brag, but just to point out
Speaker 1: that it was a lot slower um, but that the
Speaker 1: connection I had to the wood into learning. How you know,
Speaker 1: I made a lot of mistakes and bent nails, and
Speaker 1: there was frustration. But now when I'm in that cabin
Speaker 1: and I hear the rain on the roof and I
Speaker 1: feel protected and warm and the fire going in the fireplace,
Speaker 1: that kind of satisfaction is just so different than turning
Speaker 1: on a thermosta at or sending in a check to
Speaker 1: a landlord. Um. So back to your question of the
Speaker 1: life of the past or is it a life of
Speaker 1: the future, And I think that it probably has to
Speaker 1: be a life of the future, because we know if
Speaker 1: our current way of living is unsustainable, that we have
Speaker 1: to find something that humans can do for hundreds of
Speaker 1: years and continue doing it. Yep, that's a great story.
Speaker 1: I love how you talk about the satisfaction you get
Speaker 1: from doing things yourself, and as someone who by and
Speaker 1: large tries to avoid doing anything uh for himself like me,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just generally tend to take things that
Speaker 1: are more manual and outsource those. Um it's a profound
Speaker 1: way of looking at things differently. And as I've done
Speaker 1: more of that, as I've gotten older, as I've tried
Speaker 1: to re engage more, I've realized the satisfaction that that
Speaker 1: is in that so and and the way you write
Speaker 1: about that in the book is lovely. So we are
Speaker 1: at the end of our time. The book is called
Speaker 1: The Abundance of less Lessons and Simple Living from Rural Japan.
Speaker 1: I recommend that there's lots of fascinating people in it.
Speaker 1: It's a really eye opening look at a very different
Speaker 1: way of life. And so Andy, thank you for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come on. It's such a pleasure our
Speaker 1: fine interviewer, and I really love what you're doing. Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. We'll talk again by now bye.
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