I have been welcomed by a safety net of strangers providing me with helping hands. I think that the lifestyle of being helped might be a foreign concept to some high-achieving people. They tend to shy away from being helped as they see it as a sign of weakness. Dwelling in the sense of independence allows them to feel like a big boy. They also are suspicious that there are strings attached to the generosity. Luckily, I love the gifts of generosity, and I think I’m pretty good at accepting these kindnesses.
The help that I am talking about is given without expecting anything in return. I think that a lot of giving in this society is giving to receive something. And that is a mere trade, not giving. I am honestly somewhat perplexed by the giving nature of people that I am encountering. It almost feels like this is a sustainable lifestyle, relying on the generosity of strangers. This might be taken as taking advantage of the kindness, but I am not going around asking for help; it just finds me.
Like when I was traveling to Nagano to get a manual license. I had nowhere to stay for the night. I just decided to pull up to this rural Japan driving school. As I was registering for the classes to get the license, the woman working there naturally asked me where I was staying for the night. I told her that I was thinking of finding nice trees to set up a hammock but was troubled by the endless rice fields and lack of sufficient trees. She went out of her way to contact her mother, and she eventually got me a little shed by the blueberry field. Throughout it all, she and her mother were apologizing to me for the lack of running water, electricity, and general shittyness of the shed. But for me, the roof is all I could ask for and the walls were a cherry on top. I was very grateful.
I told them that I would help in the blueberry field or whatever in my free time. So after practicing manual driving in the morning, I went to help set up fences to keep birds away in the blueberry field. The mom even brought me breakfast to the shed and showed me around her garden, answering my genuine curiosity questions like what are these plants or how to cultivate those plants. She told me that this garden was initially started by her late husband. I could feel the sparks in her eyes as she reminisced about the time she had with her husband. She even gave me some of his belongings, like a hat that he used to wear.
There was another man around 65 years old, who was a friend of the mom and was helping with the blueberry field. He left Tokyo around his retirement to live life in the garden. In one of our first interactions, I told him about my interest in Buddhism, and his eyes lit up and said that we would get along. And he was right; while we were working, he would answer my questions about Japanese Buddhism and broaden my knowledge on the topic. After work, he drove me to one of his favorite hot springs in the area, paid for my fee without me asking, and we talked and relaxed for almost three hours in the hot spring. He paid for my dinner that I could take home to my shed, and we parted ways. He texted me the next morning about temples that I should visit and a song that helped him when he was around my age, trying to figure out life.
I stayed in this little town for three days, which is how long it took to get the license. I had a couple of days before I needed to return to Tokyo for my dentist appointment, so I decided to check out some other areas nearby that I could get to by train. Through recommendations from locals, I decided to go to Nobeyama, the highest altitude station in Japan. I was warned by some people that there was “nothing there.” When people say there is nothing there, it is obviously not true; there are things there, such as trees, bugs, and air. When they say there is nothing there, they mean that there is nothing that is conventionally interesting in their worldview. And so I ended up at that station. I wandered around a little bit and decided to ask a person working in a little cafe if there were some nice trees to set up my hammock. It seems like not many people ask that question, and after she had a little panic attack, she told me that there was a little park if I walked a bit through the cabbages and the corn.
The advantage I have is that I trained to sit in boredom last semester. The training was brutal; it consisted of me doing no drugs, no screen, no books, and sitting on the couch staring at a black-screened TV for hours. I went through all sorts of emotions: boredom leads to sadness and anger. But eventually, I became more at peace sitting around. So the prospect of sitting around on a hammock, meditating, doing yoga, or playing my drum in a land that I’ve never been to sounds like a very stimulating time.
So I was making my way to the park. I was observing my thoughts as I walked. There was a thought of sadness about leaving the people who welcomed me back in the town where I got my license. In three days, I had already formed some attachment. The attachment led to thoughts like, “I made a mistake leaving people that took care of me,” and “I will not find people like that again.” This is quite intriguing. I reminded myself that there is no need to dwell in the past, whether good or bad, and that the moment is now. All I need to do is to be open to whatever the moment brings.
And sure enough, I was welcomed unexpectedly. I walked into a little farm as I saw the sign for fresh soft-serve ice cream. I was talking to an employee there, and she told me that there was a thunderstorm warning, and that means I can’t set up my hammock on a tree. It is a rookie mistake to undermine the rain when being homeless. Finding a roof is a vital course of action. I learned that the hard way on my first night of being homeless. So I was talking to her, and she called in another person at the farm who had been there for several decades, Moto. As soon as he saw me with my big backpack, he asked the woman if she had given me free ice cream, and when he found out that I bought the homemade pudding, he gave me soft-served ice cream.
One of the hidden dangers of this lifestyle is sugar consumption. I have received so much free food, and a lot of the time, this free food is carbs and sugar. It is very hard to say no to free food, especially soft-served ice cream already served on a cone. The issue with sugar is that the more I consume, the more I crave. This is due to the gut bacteria sending signals to crave more sugar if you feed them a little. I need to figure out the balance of eating healthy and being grateful for the food that is given.
Anyhow, he made sure that I was provided for and called his friend, who had many tents, to lend me one for the night. He dropped me off at his friend's place and told me that the friend is pretty crazy and that I would get along. I am not too sure how he concluded that I would get along with a crazy person, but he was not wrong. I was greeted by a house full of bicycles, old cars, and an old man. It turns out he is a mechanic who picks up random pieces of old gadgets, breaks them apart, keeps the pieces in very organized cabinets, and uses the pieces to fix whatever he gets his hands on. He has also completed ultramarathons (100km marathons) more than 15 times. At the age of 70, he still does these races. He inspired me to fix my own bikes and cars, and we talked for a while. He gave me a nice tent to use for the night, and Moto picked me up to drive back to the farm. Moto showed me a place where I could set up the tent, and we talked along with several others working at the farm. I explained to them how I ended up here and some of the things I am thinking about. I also told them some plans I have moving forward and the lack thereof. I got the impression that they, especially Moto, were really pulled by the way I was approaching life. Once again, I told him that I would love to help with the farm the next day.
And I did. I helped with cutting some grass to feed the cows. He even let me practice driving the manual mini truck. This was great because I always go out of my way to buy grass-fed milk for double the price. Here I am, helping to raise a grass-fed cow. I love moving my body in a useful way. I believe that the goal of physical health is to be able to do anything with the body. When it comes to the body, it is a wide range of motion that could exert for long periods. This is very vital for farm work: being able to use new tools, carry heavy buckets, and work for a long time. Moto fed me breakfast and lunch.
There is something very wholesome about helping out and, in turn, receiving food and shelter. But I think the key is to maintain the mindset of not expecting food and shelter. Because if I were to expect those things, then I am not giving; I am trading. I just need to be confident that everything will work out. I will survive without food or shelter for at least a couple of days. But more times than not, I end up being provided for.
It was time for me to go, and Moto drove me to a station. As I was about to leave, he was getting a little worried, asking me if I had money and things like that. He eventually said, “Sorry, there is no reason to worry, you are a professional traveler.” I was touched by the desire that he had for me to be well. I said my goodbyes and eventually made my way back to Tokyo for the dentist.
This little trip was sort of a “proof of concept” of a lifestyle. I felt very adventurous, learned a lot through conversations, got to move my body outdoors, met many people who told me that I could always come back and stay if I needed, felt healthy, and spent minimal amounts of money (granted train tickets were a little costly, but that was because I didn’t have much time and I was on constant move). I prefer this over any default path that I could take, going to an office every day from 9 to 5. I also see the value of observing my mind as I face some unexpected challenges and explore what is going on in my psyche.
But the adventure continues as I return to Tokyo. I don’t have a house to sleep in, and I don’t like the idea of paying for hotels. So I opted to sleep in parks. I had to search for the most optimal locations to sleep. I came up with four criteria for good sleep: the right temperature, a dry location, mosquito-proof, and lack of attention. When all these criteria are met, sleep comes easily. The challenge is when it rains; finding a place with a roof restricts a lot.
I went to the dentist as I came back to Tokyo. As the dentist was fixing my cavities, we became good friends, and he invited me to stay at his house and go surfing the next morning. We talked about all sorts of things, and he took me to lunch after surfing. He insisted that I should text him whenever it rains to stay at his place. Well, that is one way to find a place to stay while it rains.
All these kind souls who have helped me through this week and also throughout my life, I wonder why they would go out of their way to help me. And I have some hypotheses.
I think that there is a deep yearning to live life to the fullest. And when they see someone trying to live life in an unconventional way through trial and error, they understand. Maybe not fully understand the whole thought process, but the general desire to not get trapped in the default path. And I have a mantra, “If you can’t do what you want to do now, what makes you think that you can do it later?” I feel like it is easy to get into the mindset of, “I am doing this thing that I don’t really want to do now, so that I can get to a place where I can do what I want to do later.”
This, I think, is very dangerous. There is never a moment that is easy to take a leap to pave my own path. And I believe that it gets harder to do as life goes on as, one, there might be more responsibility, and more importantly, two, we are creatures of habit, and once the habit of not pursuing the deepest yearning builds, it is hard to undo.
And when I embody this lifestyle, people see that and understand. And obviously not all will understand and, realistically, the majority won't. But even a handful of people reaching out is enough to keep striving.
It also helps to think about the vastness of the universe and its impermanence. There are two ultimate ends of the universe: heat death, where everything gets burned, or gravity sucking everything in and collapsing. Either way, there will be nothing left. At least nothing that we will ever produce in the material world. No art, no writing, no data, no computer, no history. So I think to myself, why would I live this life that will eventually disappear doing things that I don’t want to do, when I can do things that I want to do? It is ultimately very simple. Occam's razor, the simplest explanation, is often the correct view. And to simplify things, it makes sense to just follow my curiosity.
When I tell this to people, I often face backlash with the main argument consisting of, “Well, you need to be responsible and plan for the future,” and such. But honestly, that is too much thinking. And also, why try to predict the future that can’t be predicted? Why spend that energy? Ultimately, everything is impermanent. It's not that serious.
Anyway, that mindset allows me to live life in a way that inspires others to help. That’s my leading hypothesis.