Two unexpected things touched me in the last couple of days.
1. Jiro Dreams of Sushi
I am not a Sushi lover. I eat Sushi sometimes, but hardly ever have a craving for it. I went to the movie because Matthew suggested it and it has great reviews.
Those reviews are not wrong. It’s a lovely documentary of an 85-year-old man who dedicated 75 of his years to perfecting the art of Sushi making. The movie started with the simplicity of his craft and the story unfolds simply, calmly, yet entrances the viewer continuously. I would not have thought that I would be so fascinated by a) Sushi and Sushi making; b) A man whose single-mindedness in making Sushi borders on obsession – I usually have an aversion to obsessiveness, and having never felt passionate about work, instinctively skeptical of that sort of claims. But the Sushi looked gorgeously enticing, each piece an inviting mystery; and the man is fascinating in his calmness, his love of his work somehow did not make him seem obsessive, but rather gives him a balanced almost zen-like quality. Despite his insane discipline and work ethic, there’s much joy in his work. Before I saw the movie, if I had read that someone would make his apprentice massage an octopus for 45 minutes as preparation for making a sushi dinner, I would have thought this a joke, and not a funny one. But somehow watching this movie made me accept it as just Jiro’s process. Not to mention that I’m now curious enough to be able to imagine the possibility of one day shelling out over $300 for a quick meal of Sushi. Remarkable.
2. Came across this quote from a commencement speech on Friday:
It is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
I had to read it a few times. There seemed to be truth and wisdom in this that I had to pay attention. Then I moved on to other things. This morning I happened upon the fuller version on this Brain Pickings article and it made me pause again. Then the later part of the speech went:
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.
That’s when I did a search on the man who made the speech: David Foster Wallace, an accomplished writer who struggled with depression for 20 years before killing himself in 2008.
I felt both moved and more than a little lost… or to borrow the writer’s own words, unsure of how to choose what I pay attention to and to choose how I construct meaning from this experience. As I resumed reading the article on commencement speeches, the next speech, given by Ellen DeGeneres seemed to offer a kind of an answer:
So to conclude my conclusion: follow your passion, stay true to yourself. Never follow anyone else’s path, unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path, and by all means you should follow that.
Well, I am lost in the woods, therefore I will follow a path if I see one.