About These Posts

Each day I add a new journal entry to my social media feeds. Here, I take that day’s entry and expand it through the lens of my Good Life Creed, which you can read about in my book Going Alone (available for free on this website). These dissections aim to connect ordinary reflections with the enduring objectives and principles of the Creed.

Journal Entry (10/16/25)

I received a call out of the blue yesterday—the kind that comes when you’ve made your number public for anyone to dial. I was sitting on a bench at a tiny park beside the Tomoe River, reading Tolstoy’s Family Happiness, when the phone rang.

“Is this Kurt Bell?”

“Yes.”

“I saw your interview and wanted to talk with you about getting by in Japan.”

Mostly, I listened. The voice on the other end spoke quickly, telling me about their efforts to make a life here—to work, to raise a family, to get by as a foreigner in Japan. They were on their lunch break and didn’t have much time, so I put down my book and simply listened.

I heard of past attempts and future hopes, of narrow chances and fleeting wins, of how things have changed and how some things never do. The clock was ticking—lunch nearly over. I was asked a few questions, though I think my answers hardly mattered. I felt like an old soldier visiting a younger one down in the trench, sharing a few hurried words before the whistle sends them up and over into no man’s land.

Then the whistle came, and they were gone. The line went quiet. I sat there a while longer, my book in my hand, my little dog beside me, listening to the hush of the park—and to the faint, imagined sounds of human striving beyond.

Dissection

This entry reflects the quiet dignity of shared endurance—the brief intersection of two lives moving through parallel struggles. It captures how empathy and time weave together in the ongoing climb of human experience.

#Time (The Good and Effective Use of Time)

The phone call takes place within a narrow window—one lunch break, a few minutes stolen from the machinery of daily life. Within that small pocket of time, understanding unfolds, reminding us that meaning doesn’t require duration, only presence.

#Uphill (The Uphill Climb)

The caller’s voice represents the strain of human striving—trying to make life work in a foreign land, shouldering responsibility, persevering. The listener, now retired, recognizes the familiar rhythm of that effort. Life’s climb continues, even after the summit of work is behind us.

#Borne (That Which Must Be Borne)

Listening becomes its own quiet form of endurance—a willingness to hold another’s burden for a moment. Not to solve, not to teach, but simply to share the load. In that act lies the simplest expression of humanity.

Takeaway

Connection doesn’t always need words or solutions. Sometimes it’s enough to listen, to share a moment of understanding, and then to let the current of life carry each of us forward again—separately, yet not alone.