It shouldn't have been like this!

I'm not sure into which category this post belongs to: whether it's budo, culture, buddhism or what. (I'm quite sure that no bad poetry will be included, but I'm only in the beginning of the post so you never know what will happen...) So I'll just start rambling from the middle.

The worst suffering in life comes from "it shouldn't have been like this". It's the moment when your expectations are crushed and you face the very unfairness of life. I'm sure these moments show up in everyone's life now and then, and while going completely blind at age 20 is probably worse than not getting the scholarship you wanted, well, there is a common ground in all of these cases. One is that crying and getting angry doesn't really help you at all. Actually, it probably just makes things worse.

I know this post will jump a bit from one topic to another, but "expectations" (or delusions, as it also could be called) will act as the operative word. Try to keep that in mind while reading.

Expectations are normal. You could even say that if you wouldn't have any expectations it would be pointless to do anything in order to achieve something, since if you don't have ANY idea on how thigs could turn out, well... Of course after I've written this and click the "publish post" button, I expect that my post will go to my blog page, and preferably on the top of it as it should. But what happens if our internet connection decides to shut off on that particular moment and my post simply disappears into some black hole of the blogosphere? (and just after typing this I get the message "internet disconnected" - you see, this ain't some made-up example...) Well, of course I can shout and rave at my computer and vent away my anger - that's one way. You think that's going to get my post back to me?

Anyways, that's one thing - it had worked before, so it wasn't unreasonable to think that the same button on the same site would do the same thing. Sometimes shit just happens.

What would be more problematic would be if I'd go to another site, say, my friend's blog, and go to the "comments" area. There I would see a box much like the one I'm just writing in, and a button under where it says "publish comment". And then I go, "Great! I'll just write my blog here, then click that "publish something" button and voila, I have a new blog post on my site, just there where I want it to be!" And oh the rage and woe when this doesn't happen!

Now, all of those who haven't stopped reading this blog and de-friended me in facebook as they think I've finally lost it and don't want to be friends with a complete nutcase: Does this example sound stupid? Surely no one would be that dumb, right?

Maybe. But then how come if we change the surroundings from computers and internet to japanese culture then this is EXACTLY the type of mistake many people do, and then act outraged when things don't go as they planned?

To give an example: I watched yesterday the movie "Stupeur et tremblements", which is a somewhat artistically exaggerated story of a young woman working in a japanese company. I had a teacher who was outraged at the stereotypical and twisted (in his opinion) picture it gives of the japanese business organizations. Well, I don't know about the business world, but the basic problematics of that movie sure reminded me of the ones many foreigners meet when they get more engaged with some forms of japanese society, including koryû. And I can see and understand from where the troubles encountered by the girl of the movie come from. There are of course several examples, but let's just take the one that is kind of on the bottom of most of them: her relationship to Mori Fubuki, her immediate superior.

Mori-san is depicted in the movie as a backstabbing and bitter old maid, who gets jealous of Amelie's rapid success. On her first day at work Amelie is introduced to Mori-san, whom she soon thinks of as a friend (maybe somewhat influenced by an obvious infatuation with her and the japanese femaleness), and is then later shocked when she discovers that Mori-san is the very traitor who got her caught when she was breaking the rules of the company. She then goes on to confront Mori-san, which ends up aggravating the whole situation between them. More grief follows, and in the end Amelie ends up cleaning the toilets, although she was hired as an interpreter. (Not that I oppose cleaning toilets, mind you, having done that myself too on monday mornings 7am at the temple... ^^)

What basically happens is that Amelie takes her own expectations of female friendship, glues them on her superior (just because they both happen to be the only young females in the office and sharing a desk at work), and is shocked when it is revealed to her that Mori-san wasn't in it in the way Amelie thought.

And for some reason it seems to me that the more someone thinks Japan as an "exotic and cool" country, the more they are amazed that things don't work the way they expect. I mean, come on guys! If it's so damn exotic in the first place then you really shouldn't be that surprised that it doesn't work out exactly like home...

The situation in the movie (if we take the feelings of spite and jealousy away) is actually quite similar to my previous rant about koryû not being a democracy: your superiors, when they need to act in their role, aren't friends. Even though the movie made it seem that Mori-san acted purely out of spite, if looked through an objective lens, her actions were exactly what they should have been IF she judged that Amelie was breaking the rules and jeopardizing the company. You can draw the connections between the previous post and this as you like.

Remeber, if you expect your own definitions of "fair", "right", "friendship" and "equality" (and this goes also for their opposites) to work somewhere else than in your own head or culture, well, be prepared to be disappointed. If you're brave/stupid enough to get neck deep into *insert foreign culture*, and yet expect them to follow your logic, well, don't come crying to me. No one forced you there, right?

As one of my teachers in France once told us not-french in her class: "YOU decided to come here and study, so it's your own problem if your french skills don't match my standards."

Harsh, maybe, but also the truth. No one forced us to go to her classes. We were there voluntarily, and we always had the choice of leaving. But if we decided to stay, we had to do it on her rules. Many things work like this, even the familiar ones at home. So why should it be so surprising that it's the same thing when you go to a japanese dojo? Just get rid of your expectations, see how THAT place/sensei/culture works, and then go with that. It's that simple.

Sure, the learning process is hard as hell. BUT: if the people see that you sincerely try to learn and try to do what they do, your beginning mistakes are always forgiven. If, however, they see that you don't listen and don't even try to learn their way of doing things, well, of course they stop trying to get their message through! (This was excellently put in this article on dojo culture: http://www.koryu.fi/ArtikkelitDojo.htm) If you go to a new environment, the worst thing you can do is to expect that you know something already. It might work, or it might not - but if your expectations are strong enough you might not even notice the difference and then after several months you wonder why no one likes you at all, even though your loud and lewd jokes were always appreciated by your drinking buddies back at home.

You just happened to forget that you wanted to try yourself some of that meditation, d'you know, and for that you decided to stay at the most serious monastery you could find for a month, where everyone else is a fervent believer in silence and peace and soberness of the body-mind.