The Freedom of Enough
I just reread this 2023 post about a neighborhood Tokyo izakaya (and my related thoughts), spurred by a conversation w/ my friend Andrew about what makes for good work, a good life, and a good society. It dovetails with this podcast conversation between Rich Roll and Craig Mod, which I listened to on the plane to Japan and which tore me into about 1000 pieces. Craig talks about what it means to have “enough” and the Japanese term yoyū:
Pondering the shrinking communities and advanced decay he saw during the trip (documented in photos of shuttered main streets and nature vigorously reclaiming the landscape), Mod thought back to his childhood home: a blue-collar American town where the factories had closed, replaced by poverty, drugs and violence.
“The inspiration I’ve always drawn from Japan is that the lowest you can fall is not that low,” he says. “Whereas I grew up watching people fall really, really low — frequently, and kind of hopelessly.”
His explanation for why similar levels of economic decline produce such different outcomes hinges on the Japanese term yoyū, which conveys a sense of sufficiency: enough time, enough money, enough energy. As Mod puts it, yoyū is “the space in your heart to accept another person… another situation, another context.”
“As the economy changes in those rural areas, I think you see a kind of grace because the foundations of support are still there, right?” he continues. “They’re not losing health care. They’re not losing social infrastructure… And that gives them the yoyū to be able to accept the fact that their towns are disappearing, without degrading into substance abuse or violence or whatever. The contrast being in America, there’s none of that sort of protection enabled, so you have none of that excess space.”
As an American, it’s tough sometimes even to conceive of having that excess space (except what you’ve been able to cobble together on your own, a jury-rigged safety net one medical crisis away from collapse). I always notice its presence when I’m traveling — like, oh, this society takes care of its people. Huh.
I just reread this 2023 post about a neighborhood Tokyo izakaya (and my related thoughts), spurred by a conversation w/ my friend Andrew about what makes for good work, a good life, and a good society. It dovetails with this podcast conversation between Rich Roll and Craig Mod, which I listened to on the plane to Japan and which tore me into about 1000 pieces. Craig talks about what it means to have “enough” and the Japanese term yoyū:
Pondering the shrinking communities and advanced decay he saw during the trip (documented in photos of shuttered main streets and nature vigorously reclaiming the landscape), Mod thought back to his childhood home: a blue-collar American town where the factories had closed, replaced by poverty, drugs and violence.
“The inspiration I’ve always drawn from Japan is that the lowest you can fall is not that low,” he says. “Whereas I grew up watching people fall really, really low — frequently, and kind of hopelessly.”
His explanation for why similar levels of economic decline produce such different outcomes hinges on the Japanese term yoyū, which conveys a sense of sufficiency: enough time, enough money, enough energy. As Mod puts it, yoyū is “the space in your heart to accept another person… another situation, another context.”
“As the economy changes in those rural areas, I think you see a kind of grace because the foundations of support are still there, right?” he continues. “They’re not losing health care. They’re not losing social infrastructure… And that gives them the yoyū to be able to accept the fact that their towns are disappearing, without degrading into substance abuse or violence or whatever. The contrast being in America, there’s none of that sort of protection enabled, so you have none of that excess space.”
As an American, it’s tough sometimes even to conceive of having that excess space (except what you’ve been able to cobble together on your own, a jury-rigged safety net one medical crisis away from collapse). I always notice its presence when I’m traveling — like, oh, this society takes care of its people. Huh.
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