dogs are cats
"Actually, no one ever told you to carry the mikoshi (portable shrine). It's just that, Yusuke, comparing yourself to others around you, mistakenly felt like you were told to. If you don't want to carry it, you don't have to. As long as you can accept the version of yourself who doesn't carry it."
The camera slowly pans, capturing the entire hospital room.
"Is that..."
Yusuke cuts off Tomoya’s words.
"You mean that trendy thing, like 'You don't need a purpose in life, just being alive is enough,' that kind of idea?"
There might be a narration from Akiko Yuge, as no captions appear for a while.
"People who say that always seem to be the ones who've found their purpose in life."
…
"I think there are three types of people."
In front of Yuge, Yusuke raises his index finger.
"The first type are people who have a purpose in life, and that purpose is directed towards others or society, like family or work. These are people focused on contributing to others. This is the easiest way to live. They have a family or loved ones, they like their job, and no one criticizes them for just existing. They don’t even need to wonder 'What’s the meaning of my life?' because every day just flows automatically. It’s the best."
Yusuke raises his middle finger.
"The second type are people who have a purpose, but it’s not directed towards others or society. Even if they don’t like their job or don’t have family or loved ones, they still have hobbies, things they love, things they want to do. These are the self-actualizers. With this type, there are moments when they wonder if it’s okay to live like this. But sometimes, what they do for themselves ends up benefiting others or society. Like someone who loves drawing for themselves ends up becoming a manga artist and entertaining readers."
Yusuke lowers his two fingers.
"The third type are people who don’t have any purpose. They neither contribute to others nor work on self-actualization, and exist only as a life support system for themselves."
Yuge finally remembered what he was about to do.
"I think..."
The camera. He had been trying to take out the camera.
"I think the reason why people keep working, even when it’s tough and all they do is complain, is not so much for money or survival, but because they don’t want to fall into becoming that third type of person. Eating, pooping, sleeping, existing solely for themselves—that kind of existence would drive anyone crazy faster than doing a job they hate. At some point, they must have realized that."
…
"I just want a role for the time I have left before I die. I just want to make the time I have until I die into time that's worth living. I don’t have anything I want to do, for myself or for others, so I have no choice but to keep fabricating opponents to fight. Without some kind of friction, I’d lose my warmth."
From: Living in search of a reason to die (死にがいを求めて生きているの) by Ryo Asai
“Works like this also have the capacity to change us, as we make them. As Cage once wrote, “Our business in living is to become fluent with…life…and art can help this.” And elsewhere: “Art…is not self expression but self alteration.” Artmaking isn’t just something we do for the outcome; it’s something we do for the process, which includes the process of becoming the person with the taste, knowledge, sensitivity, agency, and ambition to produce the outcome. The most revelatory experience of art may come from the making, not merely the experiencing.
In a recent post, the writer Venkatesh Rao proposed a taxonomy of different kinds of “creators.”There are two modes of writing; he suggested: writing instrumentally and writing metaphorically. “Instrumental words,” Rao writes, “try to change the world in predictable ways, while acquiring some sort of legible extrinsic reward.” Instrumental artmaking is what I’ve described above—art that acts as a commodity, that is meant to perform a predefined function. But the kind of writing that Rao is most interested in is writing that functions as metamorphosis:
Metamorphic words…attempt to change the author in unpredictable ways, which you can think of as an intrinsic reward of sorts…If you don’t like, or are bored with, who you are right now, whether as a writer, or more generally as a person, you can write yourself into an unpredictable new version. It’s a kind of disruptive self-authorship lottery.
Human existence is characterized by a perpetual dissatisfaction, a divine discontent, with who we are now, and what our world looks like now, compared to what it could be. Change is unpredictable; we rarely know how things will turn out in the end. But we still invite it, still seek it out.
Artmaking is, for many, an essential part of enacting these changes. As long as we desire to change ourselves and our reality, we will continue to create art. AI might be our companion in this effort, a useful and invigorating collaborator, but it is not capable of changing us alone. We need to actively participate and author that change.”
“It’s not so bad to be stuck sometimes though, right? Stuckness is what allows you to really appreciate the moments of motion. Rishi tells me he’s become a big fan of “the pause”—when you’re at an impasse, when you’re not sure what the next move is, just take a break. When I want someone to say more in a conversation, I just keep my mouth shut. When yoga feels frustrating and I’m not making any progress, I just take a couple of weeks off. So I can come back fresh. And am I afraid I’ll just stop, never go back? Sometimes. But not really because as long as you love something you’re going to keep throwing yourself at it. That’s my philosophy, anyway. Writer’s block is hard because writing consistently is one of the cornerstones of my life. It’s what allows me to parse my thoughts and emotions. If I don’t write, I literally can’t clean my apartment. The state of my fridge is a direct reflection of the state of my mind. I need to write in order to function. And yet, sometimes I sit down and nothing happens. The first day of fall is in 12 days. I always loved going back to school, the feeling of progression. I was an unruly kid, my parents and teachers were always trying to teach me discipline, order. As an adult, I’m the only one who is accountable for good habits, waking up at a reasonable time in the morning, taking my dog to the park. And sometimes I just feel so stagnant—so bogged down in uncertainty. No beautiful words to make everything better. No appetite for reading and how can I write when I’m not reading? And yet I’ve been feeling this way on and off for years and still somehow doing the thing. Being in it for the long haul means doubting your capacity for the work and bending yourself to it anyway.”
If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding.1 Put simply:
I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together.
I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive.
Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
The useful thing about defining good design as a form-context fit is that it tells you where you will find the form. The form is in the context.
To find a good relationship, you do not start by saying, “I want a relationship that looks like this”—that would be starting in the wrong end, by defining form. Instead you say, “I’m just going to pay attention to what happens when I hang out with various people and iterate toward something that feels alive”—you start from the context.
https://www.bytedrum.com/posts/art-of-finishing/
While starting projects might expose you to new technologies or concepts, it’s in the act of finishing—of solving those last, trickiest problems—where real skill growth often occurs. Each unfinished project can chip away at your confidence. Over time, you might start to doubt your ability to complete anything substantial, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of incompletion.
what a beautiful collection 🤍 needed to hear these today, thank you :)