The Japanese word that’s challenging me to make space
Every now and then you have a foreign word with no English equivalent that gets so popular, entire books emerge. Japanese and Scandinavian languages are responsible for a good portion of them, from wabi-sabi to ikigai to hygge.
But you know, more often than not, there’s a good reason they catch on so well.
I’ve recently become pretty motivated by one of them in particular.
Yutori.
Yutori is a Japanese word that describes living a more spacious life. It’s a life with breathing room, the space to slow down, and to not be so frenzied. It’s a life without a sense of rush, hurry, or time scarcity, with more opportunity to take deep breaths.
The art of spacious living is something that’s long eluded me, but having a term for it has someone made it a more tangible concept. One that I can try and steer towards.
A little look at our time in Portugal.
For whatever reason, the first half of this year has been going at a pretty frantic pace. I’ve already had six international trips, dealt with a few shortages in childcare, and kept the ball rolling on work and related projects. To take it all a step further, I’m also currently marathon training, which kind o/f epitomizes where life is right now.
It’s kind of felt like a feat of endurance.
Rest has been elusive.
There was this little stretch right after I got back from Portugal where Deanna got sick. This also happened to be Mother’s Day weekend. I decided to do the morning and evening routines with all the kids so she could get rest. However, this also happened to be a weekend where I had two improv shows on consecutive nights. And in the gap between them, I also had to manage a 16 mile run.
I don’t know if I’ve ever felt my body demand rest quite so intensely.
The idea of simply being able to lay flat for a good while and do nothing seemed so appealing, yet out of reach. There was yet another demand, another work task, another moment I needed to flex to cover childcare. I really just wanted that space for nothingness.
It kind of made me yearn for Portugal a bit. The space where I was just one week prior.
Yutori may be a Japanese word, but the Iberian Peninsula is a pretty good spot to practice it. I find that Spanish and Portuguese cultures do provide ample time to move slow and look around. And they actually reward you for doing it. Take for instance, these buildings. These tiles. These are gorgeous. It’s your loss if you just speed past them on your daily commute.
Practicing Yutori, cultivating a spacious life has helped me build up a better resistance against time anxiety, as well as living in a hurry.
As much as I admire Yutori, I’m not all that great at it. My default tendency is to approach life with an appetite to pack as much into it as possible. I also like this about myself, as its led me to do a lot of cool stuff, so I haven’t wanted to stop being such an enthusiast. Just to curb its ill effects a little bit.
I figured an approach of Yutori could help a little bit.
Portugal felt like an opportunity to live days that weren’t dictated by the clock. Where I could be freer to follow the rhythms of body, nature, and spirit.
In Portugal, time just seems to move slower. There’s not a frantic rush to get everywhere. Eating times tend to drift later.
My observation is that whenever I’m visiting a country or setting that approaches time in this fashion, what they receive is an abundance of time. If not an abundance that can be measured, at least a sense of abundance where the days feel longer and slower. Where there’s more room to take in the world around you.
It can look like trying to arrive at a place a little bit early so that when you get there you have a moment to look around. It’s reading a really good part of a book and realizing that you don’t have to continue on. You can just take a moment and let those words sink. It’s catching yourself while you’re eating, to make sure you’re not just shoving in bite after bite, but truly enjoying each one.
Because in the US, in our regular life, it’s so easy to being a hurry. And you hurry because you have a lot of things to do, you try to pack it all in to a single day. Sometimes I fall for this fallacy that if I do things quickly, if I accomplish things twice as fast, then I’ll free up time. Have more time to relax.
That rarely works.
Instead it makes you work at this frantic pace. Your effort to create time is actually making you feel like you have less of it.
I visited Portugal with my friend Daniel and his wife, and I also had my whole family along for the trip. This includes our three kids who are all under five. The spaciousness of our time there allowed me to actually enjoy the moments we were spending as a family together, without feeling like my head was too caught up in the logistics of making everything work out.
I’ve been hoping to use the experience I had in Portugal to launch into a life with more Yutori back home. It’s been a struggle, especially with all the demands of life picking up and unforeseen incidents like my wife getting sick and having to step it up more to cover. But I think my past tendency has been to get stuck living at that rhythm, rather than treating it like an aberration and then attempting to course correct as soon as I can.
These days, I think my practice of creating more spaciousness looks like being really generous with the allotment of time I give myself to get things done. When I plan my schedule, I give myself whole hours to do things, even if I know I could maybe get it done in half that time. If nothing else, I’ll just produce more quality work with that space.
After all, when it comes to my work, if I just do one single meaningful thing that day, it moves things forward. There’s no need to get greedy by trying to stuff it all in. I’d rather do one meaningful task, and do it mindfully, and do it better, and enjoy doing it, than simply trying to cross off a long list.
One other practice that I’m working on but finding much harder is this.
Taking to different activities like it may be the last time I do them.
I don’t want to be morbid about this, but to a degree, keeping this in mind can be very helpful. It stops me from overplanning the next trip while I’m on this one. It helps me try and get the very most out of whatever I’m doing.
When it comes to art, especially visual art, I’ve long been aware that creating more negative space gives more room for the highlights to be appreciated, for the important things to stand out. Between having young kids, a variety of creative endeavors, and opportunities for adventure like the time I spent in Portugal, there’s a lot I like about my life right now.
However it’s a bit too easy to lose sight of how good I have it when I’m constantly in a crunch.
Creating a more spacious life is one of the best ways I can think of to honor all the good I’ve been given.