10/27/25 — The Quiet Disappearances (Journal Entry Dissection: #Atomic #Apathy #Well)
- Kurt Bell
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
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 (10/27/25)
A few of the older people in my life here in Japan have quietly disappeared. The widow who used to stand in the back during our 6:30 AM morning exercises by the river, and the deaf “professor” who tended a garden around the corner from my house. His once carefully kept plot has gone feral since the end of summer—grass tall, weeds thick, and the neat rows he once shaped now lost beneath a tangle of green.
No one in our small circle of neighbors has said where they’ve gone. Maybe they’ll return. But probably they won’t.
Dissection
There’s a hush in this reflection—the kind that accompanies quiet departures and the slow absorption of human life back into the larger flow of things.
#Atomic (Principle of the Atomic)
Everything breaks down, returns, and begins again. The vanishing of neighbors, the overgrown garden, even the fading of memory—each reflects the truth that nothing remains separate for long. All things dissolve into the whole, quietly and without announcement.
#Apathy (Principle of Apathy)
This is not coldness, but composure—the peace of seeing without protest. To witness the fading of others without undue sorrow is to understand the boundaries of control, and to rest calmly within what is.
#Well (Principle of Life Will Not Go Well)
Loss and decline are as certain as sunrise. The garden’s wildness, the empty places in the morning crowd—these are not failures, but natural turns in the rhythm of living. To accept them as such is the work of quiet maturity.
Takeaway
In time, all things and people return to nature’s keeping. The best we can do is to notice their going—to see the stillness they leave behind, and to continue tending what remains with calm and open eyes.
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