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 (10/30/25)

I’ve never been much of a homebody. Yet now I spend nearly every day within the small plot of land Yumiko and I bought here in Japan’s Valley of Tea. Still, it doesn’t feel like retreat or seclusion. From my second-floor room, the mountains rise quickly from yuzu, plum, and chestnut trees, through bamboo and over the river toward cedar and old deciduous growth beyond. The river below glints and murmurs softly—a steady reminder of passing time.

Sometimes I hear the nearby elementary school, the one our daughter once attended when she was small. And every so often, the faint roar of a bullet train rolls through the valley, reminding me the city is close. Somehow, even when I’m alone here, I don’t feel alone.

Life in this house feels a little like sitting in a theatre’s balcony box—quietly watching the movement and sound of the world unfolding below. The play goes on, with or without me, and I’m content simply to watch.

Dissection

This reflection stands at the intersection of solitude and belonging—a quiet moment of awareness that life continues all around, full of motion and sound, even when one’s own role has shifted to that of an observer. From this vantage point, there is peace not in doing, but in seeing.

#Death (Objective: Be Always Ready to Die)

There’s no morbidity here, only readiness. The balcony box becomes a metaphor for the later stages of life: an elevated seat from which to witness the living world, content in its continuity, untroubled by one’s eventual departure. Acceptance is the truest form of readiness.

#Time (Objective: Make Good and Effective Use of Time and Resources)

The murmuring river below marks time’s steady current—neither hurried nor halted. To sit and watch, to listen and remember, is not waste but use; the mind at rest can still find meaning in the hours as they pass.

#Maturity (Principle of Maturity)

Maturity transforms longing for participation into gratitude for perspective. The contentment of simply watching the play is not resignation but evolution—the understanding that one’s value no longer lies in striving, but in understanding.

Takeaway

To live well in later years is to hold the balcony seat with grace—to listen, to watch, and to let the world move as it will, grateful to still be part of the audience.

#RetiringInJapan 🇯🇵 #GoingAlone 🌵 #Death #Time #Maturity