This is written for me. But you are allowed to read.

What Year 2021 means ? For me it means Last 365-390 days of my Life, I don’t see time as discontinuous. A year might stop, and and new year starts but time keeps going on. Just a new year starting won’t magically fix everything. Demons won’t disappear, You won’t magically have more strength. But I still like this tradition of celebrating a new year. It makes us look back, think evaluate, make some new commitments. Maybe we should do this more often, maybe twice a year, maybe every month.

Cancer.

At the start of December’20 I was falsely detected with cancer of some rare kind. The information of the pathological report being wrong came in Jan or Feb. So when it was detected, I had two options, to Live in India get it treated properly(chemo and radiation ?) or to Leave for Japan.
I read this book called “The Cancer Code” by Jason Fung. Three things I understood :-

  1. Cancer Relapse happens
  2. Immune System plays an important role in Cancer.
  3. Genetically I am more prone to diabetes than Cancer.

I picked to leave for Japan against everyone advising otherwise. I come from a middle class family, so I knew If I stay here and something happens, my parent’s savings will all go down the drain and still won’t be enough. And Still there will be no surety just hope. I also thought If Something happens, atleast I saw Japan. This particular 2-3 months of my Life were very stressful and led me to evaluate a lot of things in my Life.

Cancer Pathology.

This thing you should know about cancer, cancer pathology is very tricky, and even two experts can disagree what cancer and what kind of cancer a particular cancer is. Cancer pathology is expensive so it can happen that a particular Lab didn’t do enough test to be certain. This book called “Cost of Hope” highlights this issue pretty well. Advice is to always get two or more opinions.

Impact.

To me the only thing that mattered at that time was :-

  1. Experiences I have gained.
  2. Impact I have created in people’s Life.

I learned and acknowledged about

  1. uncertainty of life.
  2. to convert moments into memories.
  3. to fight for things that you care about.

I came to japan in the midst of all the chaos.

Living in Japan.

The thing about living in a foreign country is, it strips away all the familiarity, all the warmth we have. Japan and India is culturally so different, different in how the cities are designed. I am not a person who is homesick, I have never been one. I really like the freedom of being alone and independent. It has been more than 8 years that I haven’t lived properly at home. I have lived alone in various places for various duration and I have never been homesick. But this one year in Japan made me so homesick. The initial 4-5 months you are just awestruck by how beautiful, clean, and ordered Japan is. Next 6-7 months became slowly hard to bear.

Stripping away of all familiarity is also a good thing. You can be in any city of India and not feel that a lot. Learning a new language from scratch, navigating day to day things, like buying groceries, going to bank, daily meetings, Loosing 15,000 yen shinkansen tickets, and then getting a replacement for free, It provides an entirely different level of confidence. It feels like you are being primed for something and everything.

Physical Health.

I worked on this a lot after coming to japan. Got shredded. Did a lot of intermittent fasting. Also did a three day water fast. Planning to do 5 day water fast this year.

Obesity is directly linked to cancer, there are some studies which suggest fasting prevents cancer. Multiple benefits of fasting heavily recommend both long and intermittent fasting, just take proper precautions on electrolyte.

Physical Health is an Area, I don’t want to be wistful later on in my life. It affects your emotional health as well.

A Friend..

I like being alone. I like doing things alone. But walking a unknown path with someone makes it a bit easy. All the people who came to Japan with me, the information sharing, how to do something, like buying a sim, transferring money to home, buying a gym membership, made it less stressful. Thanks to these people.

Money

The amount of money I have now, it enabled me to do things. To do things for people, to be a bright spot in their lives. To make them feel valued, to put a safety layer over their lives. I have made sure that my recurring living cost is low. I understand compounding.

Working vs College.

When I was in college, I was Zero. Not much bank balance. No safety net nothing. I can do anything at any cost, without hesitation. I was ruthless, careless. I was actively learning, everything that I can get my hands on. The Hunger, The dedication.

After job all of these things changed. Needs to be worked on, Point of improvement.

People.

I got a reality check on how people are in real lives. Got a very deep understanding how good people are capable of doing exceptionally shitty things. I heavily encourage you to watch movie called Silenced(Korean). This whole idea of good and bad people is very terrible and shallow imo. Any labels and tags, if someone says he or she is a good human, ask to whom are you good, when you are capable of being good, when you are not capable of being good, in which situations you have actual empathy to be good to others, to understand the pain, in which situations you are cold as fuck, is your good actually from a source of empathy, a shared pain or is it just virtue signalling. Same goes for every other thing. Every other labels.
Am I capable of ruining people days, months year, lives for my own pleasure ? Yes.
Will I ? Maybe yes, Maybe no. Only time will tell.

I maybe wildly wrong but a small signature of so called good people can be :-

  1. Discipline Emotional and others - It includes a lot of things from introspection, to understanding your own emotions how one emotions triggers something yada yada. I feel more disciplined you are more free you become
  2. Strength - Again very wide, Strength to endure pain, Strength to fight yada yada.
  3. Pro Actual Fucking Growth - A lot of fakers here.

People generally overestimate their ability to endure pain and underestimate how a situation can cause pain.

And more.

I think this front of my life, human interaction, human understanding it grew a lot.

Nothing is Written on Stone…

I generally have an image, of how things will or might play out, and when things are different good or back I was taken by surprise. For example, I was supposed to catch flight on 13th January, it was rescheduled by airlines to 14th, as I had a connecting flight later that day on 13th, I changed it to 12th. Be in the moment and pivot when needed

I wasn’t like that before, I used to panic. I read this book called, Hagakure, it has a very important quote :-

“one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths.”

The rest of the year, I have incorporated this thing in my life, It has been a new addition. I know the weakness of this concept as well. You should read this book in order to understand more how this thing works, or you are going to fuck up big time.

Ways of Life.

There are two major ways of life. Disciplined Life and Artistic Life. In a Disciplined Life you lay down a set of principles and live your life in those guidelines. In an Artistic Life your major focus is to gain as many experiences as possible including hidden and forbidden experiences. Both have their own pain points. Pick the pain you want to and can bear.

This book Hagakure is really a good read. Highly Recommended.
Overall this last year, has taken a toll overall and in hindsight very taxing, but in return made me push my boundaries. I feel good now, better. The next 365 days will be challenging, and “wait for it..” legendary :). That’s basically all. There is more and more. But That’s all.
Thanks for reading.