Back to the basics.

 

As I celebrate my birthday weeks, this phrase has been on my mind for a long time, and I have been thinking about it a lot.

 

I have come to “Route 66,” the place where I started writing this blog. And it is also the origin of the name of this blog.

 

Route 66 is the road that connects downtown Chicago to Santa Monica on the west coast of the United States. I am sure you have heard of it at least once, haven’t you?

I like the word “road” very much.

 

It has various meanings and is probably one of the most representative kanji in the Japanese language.

 

I feel that in life, we are always on a path, moving forward, stopping, and sometimes going back a little. The road never disappears because we create it by oneself.

Sometimes we wonder if we are really on the right path.

So I try to retrace the path once.

That is what I call going back to the basics.

 

“shoshin-ni-kaeru” means that “Going back to the basics” is a Japanese proverb.

It means to recall your initial feelings once again while reviewing what you have done so far. It is also a good opportunity to think about how much you have grown.

 

When we are busy with our daily lives, we often forget to go back to the beginning.

We often forget to go back to the basics and fail to acknowledge how hard we have been working. To raise your self-esteem, it is important to recognize even small promotions.

 

Think about the kind of life you wanted to lead in the beginning:

• Where would you like to be?
• What kind of people do you want to spend time with?
• What do you want to do with your life?

 

The world is filled with so much information and so many bugs that we forget if we don’t have a chance to think back.

This can be called the evolution of technology.

There is no doubt that the evolution of technology has made us comfortable, but it has also made us less able to think for ourselves.

 

We even let machines choose the people we go on dates with, so It may look like you are choosing your own date, but the AI is also selecting the right person for you from among the thousands and thousands of people registered in the database.

Even though there are places you really want to visit, the spread of photos and videos has made it possible to enjoy the scenery and experiences through images, to the point where your brain is satisfied with the simulated experience and you feel you don’t need to go there anymore.

To be honest, I am also thankful for today’s technology that allows me to enjoy conversations with my family via LINE.

 

However, I have to go back to my original intention.

When I go back to the beginning, I can remember that there were many good things that I could only experience and feel in the past, as well as the current evolution.

 

For example,

There were no cell phones and smartphones, so whenever I called the girl I liked, her parents would come up on the phone first. Then again, it was not easy for a child of my age to feel comfortable calling her every time.

There was a time when I would walk slowly and slowly on my way home from school so that she would catch up with me on the street.

If it is Today, I would just send her a message on my cell phone and that would be the end of it. I may wonder if I should send the message or not in my mind before I send it, but that’s all I have to do.

I do not need to think about how to meet and  have a conversation with someone i like in the old days, and I can’t enjoy the emotional experience of using my body and time in this way. Probably, If I’m doing it now, Am I stalking them? Why don’t you call them? I guess.

Back then, Of course, we didn’t have YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram, so I wondered what people used to do instead, now that they are tinkering with their smartphones.

Then I remembered that I had time to think about the person I was in love with, about the future, and about myself a lot more than lately.

 

So, Yes. I remembered that I had time to think about myself.

I was also doing a lot of manga, drawing, and playing video games, because Japan is full of subcultures.

 

Still, more than now, I seemed to be able to live honestly with my fifth sense.

 

I used to feel very comfortable and happy on summer nights when the wind from the rice paddies was blowing.

Now I sometimes get the same feeling on my way home from the gym.

I think that is why I have come to love exercising at the gym.

 

 

To go back to the basics is to be able to recall the feeling.

The initial passion. I remember the old days when I was thinking about how to live my life.

 

If you are suffering from problems and don’t know what to do, or if you are unmotivated,

It is important to “go back to the basics.”

 

 

If you are really having a hard time, it is okay to reset your mind.

By returning to your original mind about your future dreams, ideal future image, work, marriage, love, and various other life obstacles, and by returning to your childlike mind, you will feel like you can do something that you think is impossible now.

It’s not that what we have done and lived up to now is not in vain, and it will help us now.

 

I have grown up with a very hardened mind, but there are still many ways to go.

 

And sometimes there are hints of them from the past.

We have many emotionally charged memories of how we liked to fall in love, what kind of fun we really had, and how we felt in what kind of places.

 

So we could decide who to go out with based on our intuition “aura of a person” that we could not get from profile information from matching apps such as Tinder.

Since the start of online dating, where meeting people has become easier but everyone has a lot of choices, and both men and women can be confused about choosing the right person.

Our actual value is not how many followers we have on Instagram, but we become more concerned with that number, and we have fewer conversations with people we can call real friends. In the past, we were inundated with what seemed like emotional talk.

 

If you didn’t know your exact feelings, you wouldn’t know what to do and life would be harder.

And you will not be able to work on something with the same passion as you did in the past.

 

Let’s go back to the beginning once again and think about what you like on the basics.

 

It is able to make you excited again.

I am not lying.

In the beginning, we were all children, and we were excited about the smallest things.

 

Ice cream, just being able to eat it on a hot day made us happy.

The first payday of parttime job in my high school, $600. Still, the elation of being able to buy the shoes that I loved.

Lucky enough to stand and talk with my first love (as a result of walking slowly), the best time of my life.

 

When you look back on many memories like that, you will realize that you can live your best life as much as you want, no matter what your situation is right now.

 

By all means.

On this busy summer day.

 

Try looking up at the night sky in the middle of the rice paddies and feeling the wind.

I am sure you will feel more and more motivated.

 

Thank you for reading.

See you later.

 

ZenJin