10/01/25 — Reclaiming the Wild (Journal Entry Dissection: #Time #Purpose #Nature)

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 (10/01/25)

My eye is nearly healed from cataract surgery, which means I’ll soon be cleared by my doctor to return to the garden. The summer season for gardening has mostly passed, but gardening isn’t my aim just yet—it’s landscaping.

Behind our home lies a wilderness: a small bamboo grove, an abandoned row of tea, a towering chestnut, a plum tree, two broad swathes of flat land, an old irrigation canal, and even a little waterfall that runs when it rains. It has all stood untended for nearly eighty years, left to grow wild.

As the days cool and autumn turns to winter—when the relentless energy of the Japanese wilderness softens—I’ll begin my project. With shovel, pick, cutters, and time, I’ll work to reclaim this once-cultivated land. The goal is to prepare the ground for a proper garden next year.

Dissection

This entry captures the turning of seasons, both in nature and in personal life. The healing eye signals a return of ability, while the autumn landscape invites a mindful project: reclaiming the neglected land not for immediate harvest, but to prepare for what may come.

Here we can see:

• #Time (Good and Effective Use of Time and Resources): The work is not for today’s gratification but for tomorrow’s order and readiness.

• #Purpose (The Principle of Purpose): The choice to tend the land is not survival-driven, but a deliberate act of mission, a way of shaping life toward virtue and continuity.

• #Nature (The Principle of Nature): The land’s current state — bamboo, chestnut, plum, canal, waterfall — reflects its essence after decades of neglect: resilient, tangled, alive. To act wisely is to see this clearly, neither romanticizing nor despairing, and to respond according to your own nature as one who tends, shapes, and prepares.

Takeaway

Reclaiming the wild is not only about restoring a landscape. It is also about aligning time, purpose, and nature in a single act of preparation. We cannot stop decay or wilderness from advancing, but we can choose where and how to direct our small strength, shaping a pocket of order that will one day outlast us.