Since an exuberant start to blogging this spring, I’ve been on a so-called break. My excuse? With natural disasters of biblical proportions and political rhetoric that portend nuclear apocalypse, blogging about one’s musings has seemed a bit trifle, indulgent…  so first world.

Rage! Mobilize! My Facebook feed seems to be saying. My instinct, for the time being, has been to retreat – to tend to my own proverbial garden. To go back to center.

When I close my eyes and think of my favorite garden, it is the rock garden in Ryōan-ji of Kyoto – where, notwithstanding the hoards of tourists, Zen and Spartanism meet in meditative ecstasy.

I love the Zen aesthetic, the empty spaces speaking volumes.

Minimalism seems to be in vogue again. I do subscribe to minimalism after a fashion (notable exclusions include food, wine, books, shoes) because my idea of pornography consists of catalogues of sleek Italian furniture.

And I admire writers who possess an economy of words. One of the most resonant sentences must be that from Candide (1759):

“Excellently observed,” answered Candide; “but we must cultivate our garden.”

That famous last sentence in the novella by the French Enlightenment philosopher and social critic, Voltaire (1694-1778), has been a subject of many an interpretation, on which I have no authority. The way I interpret it to suit my own purposes is that, in a world of human lunacy and gratuitous malice, there is virtue in a fruitful and quiet life of minding one’s own business and sharing one’s surplus with others.

In my coaching practice, I often talk about the importance of finding our center – and being able to return to it in the face of turmoil, aggression or confusion. Being able to go to center is essential, because it is the place of the greatest field of vision, of the greatest freedom of choice, and of our greatest strength.

Squash players know that occupying the T-position (near the court’s center) is strategy 101.

In the realm of emotion, the center is found in acceptance – not to be equated with agreement or forgiveness. In the domain of language, the center is in silence – you have the right (and choice) to remain silent. In the territory of the body, the center is found in our energy center, a few inches below our belly button, or dantian in Chinese and hara in Japanese. 

As for ways of accessing our center, there is an abundance, starting with meditation, yoga, gardening and the like.

In face of the recent alphabet soup of natural calamities (from Harvey, to Irma, to Jose, to Katia, to Lee, to Maria) and the escalating verbal duel between boys with bombs (DJT and KJU), I needed to heed my own advice.

So I accessed my center, tended my garden, by organizing our kitchen cove. After an initial bout of frenzy, I entered a state of flow while organizing all the domestic miscellanea. Once completed, I felt an outsize sense of satisfaction and peace. The global balance of power might be in the hands of unhinged men, and the natural order of things might be unraveling; but for now, a piece of my little garden was tended to. And I am again ready to go out there – to share my surplus energy.

Dear reader, I would love to hear about your centering practices!

I know I’m not alone in saying that Big Little Lies is one of the most exciting, satisfying TV series in recent memory. (Mild spoiler alert starting in fourth paragraph.)

For some decades, I hardly watched TV. I had overdosed on TV when I was about 10, when I returned to Japan after living overseas (São Paulo and New Jersey). After eight years abroad, my Japanese was rusty at best. Once back, I had lots to catch up academically, lest I be held back a few school years. In addition to a tutor that my parents hired, I read manga voraciously to (ostensibly) brush up on my reading, even learning about the French Revolution through this genre. I also watched Japanese TV for hours upon hours to (purportedly) hone up my listening comprehension. I watched TV so much I was bloated. I was TV bulimic. So I staged my own intervention and stopped watching TV altogether.

Four decades later, I am rediscovering the pleasures of TV. I am elated by the freedom to choose: when, where, how much, which, of the incredible selection of brilliant TV series, without ads! I still can’t help but regard TV as an indulgence, so it is far from a daily habit; more of a binge-when-bedridden or a way to bond with my teenagers. Series I’ve watched and loved: Big Little Lies, This is Us, Transparent, Jane the Virgin, Catastrophe, Stranger Things, Fleabag. On my to-watch list: The Crown, The Handmaid’s Tale, Genius, Girls – and so much more to discover.

Which brings me back to Big Little Lies – the gorgeous TV series set in lush Monterey, with beautiful people in amazing clothes doing superb acting. My daughter and I watched it in its entirety (seven episodes) during spring break. Nicole Kidman is dazzling in the role of Celeste. In just a slight raise of her eyebrow while listening to her girlfriends, or in a sustained blank stare in response to her therapist’s line of questioning, she is able to say a million words. Her acting reminds me of Meryl Streep’s. I had no idea she was that good; now I want to see every one of her movies.

On surface, Celeste’s entire life is perfect. Weeks after having watched the series, I still fantasize about her house, her wardrobe, her shoes.

What I could not help but notice was that Celeste’s darkest, most violent secrets often played themselves out against the backdrop of a most stunning collection of shoes – tasteful, luxurious shoes in different styles and hues that are lit up, like pieces of art. I saw that Celeste was quite fond of shoes, yes, but that her habit had not yet filled up the storage space available to her. And that while she was tidy, she was not obsessive-compulsive in the way she displayed her shoes; there was something almost nonchalant in their arrangement. I also noticed more than a handful of booties, a reminder that it actually gets cold in California. Every time the camera was in their dressing room, my eyes immediately began scanning the shelves of shoes. All the while the s#@* was hitting the fan.

Shoes and women. We women the world over, we love our shoes. I have seldom if ever met a woman who said that she was indifferent to shoes, or that she owned enough shoes. About 10 years ago, I was in Boulder, in a shoe store, the kind where Birkenstocks and Merrells are sold. It was sales season, and there were fleece-clad women everywhere, scouring for shoes – a buzz, a frenzy. It could have been the Saks shoe salon on Boxing Day. I chatted with several of them while we looked for the perfect pair to go with our yoga pants. “Why do we love our shoes so much?” I said to nobody in particular, then answered my own question: “I think I know why: shoes will never betray you. You put on 10 pounds, your pants don’t fit, they reject and they shame you. But your shoes – they’re still there for you, they love you just the same. That’s why shoes are our best friends.”

As her marriage unravels and spirals out of control, Celeste’s shoes are undisturbed, sitting, beautiful and serene, bearing witness to all the pain and suffering. When all is said and done and destroyed, Celeste’s shoes will be there for her, waiting to give her solace. They will be there for her to walk into the café to meet her BFF (played by Reese Witherspoon), to stride into a job interview at a law firm perhaps, to elevate her to a newfound glory, certainly. Shoes will never betray you.

On the flight back from our recent family road trip of California, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the airlines’ whimsical safety video, a fresh take – at least to me – on the humdrum instructions that some of us may be able to recite by heart. As it turns out, the video is over a year and a half old, but I hope you will excuse my irrational exuberance.

You see, for some years now, I have had a bit of a fixation with one of the seemingly mundane inflight safety instructions, which I have adopted as one of my personal mantras:

Put on your oxygen mask first before helping others. 

My 14-year old daughter says that I’m reading too much into this directive. And I am so totally doing that – assigning it unintended meaning. The metaphor works for me, though, so I go with it – to remind myself of the importance of self-care, precisely so that I can do a better job trying to help others.

So many of us seem to live our daily lives according to an unspoken but almost intransigent assumption: that decent humans put the needs of others before our own. We the sandwich generation carry the burden of care for our children and our parents, on top of our workload at office and at home. We are stressed, exhausted, at the end of the rope, burnt out, about to implode/explode. Too many things to do, too many demands from too many directions: we have ceased to be human beings; we have become human doings. Not enough time, energy, bandwidth. Depleted battery.

Through my own experiences over the decades with over-functioning, depletion and burn-out, I have learned the hard way – including through illness and injury – that, to be more fully present, and to more fully give of myself to others, I needed to first replenish my reserve. I would submit that being selfish is the most selfless thing one can do. That might be going a bit too far, but at the least, I believe that self-care – securing one’s oxygen mask – is a sine qua non for living a kind, generous and loving life.

So I’ve made a commitment to myself to do at least one thing each day to replenish myself. After I do that one thing, I note it in my day planner, with the initials of the activity: M for meditating, J for journaling, P for playing piano, PB for going to Pure Barre class, R for reading a book, B for taking a bath. Less frequent self-care activities get spelled out: a hike, a massage, a spa treatment.

Self-replenishment does not have to be a solitary activity. It can come in the form of a post-dinner dog walk, holding hands with my husband. It doesn’t have to cost much money or any at all. It can be as simple as lighting a candle to do consulting work, or making myself a steaming cup of one of my favorite teas.

I am not always consistent or diligent with this self-care regimen. Whenever I get sick or have a melt down, however, I can look back in my agenda and see the pattern, as clear as day: almost no self-care in preceding weeks.

The Dalai Lama meditates something like four hours a day and takes daily walks. This self-care notion is as old as the Old Testament, just an expanded version of the second of the 10 Commandments, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”

Friends, remember to love thyselves!

Today, I turn 55 – the number that inspired my blog site, Studio 55. The “Studio” part is a semi-ironic nod to Studio 54, the nightclub that was an emblem of hedonism in the go-go 1970s and 80s, the backdrop against which I was thrust out into the world, without a GPS.

Speaking of “go-go,” my friend Junko – a photographer and food expert living in Oslo, also from Kobe, also married to a Norwegian – pointed out to me that in Japanese, the number 55, read out literally, is “go-go.” I would call this serendipity.

Because I definitely feel ready to go-go (not à la 80s, but in a more grounded, post hip replacement kind of way), notwithstanding comments from my 12-year old this morning as I chauffeured him and his buddy to the school bus stop: “Gee Mom, fifty-five? You’re so old. So old. That’s really old, you know?” My response: “It’s just a number. I don’t feel old, I feel fantastic.”

As I drove, I regaled the boys with a story from my days in the 80s on Wall Street, where I toiled as an investment banking analyst – but only because I had found a willing visa sponsor during those Japan as Number One days (and just maybe because I had to pay the rent and had no takers for my undefined creative longings).

There was a guy in my cohort, fresh out of Ivy League, who acted (to me anyway) like he was already comfortably and decidedly middle-aged. Each morning, he would walk into our windowless bullpen in his boxy grey Brooks Brothers suit, obligatory yellow power tie, clinically shiny wingtip lace-up shoes, carrying one of those hard-case brown leather briefcases you don’t see anymore. He would sit down at his station, and with great ceremony, lay down his combination lock-protected briefcase and pull out his Wall Street Journal, which he would read front to back, turning each page with great care, sipping occasionally from that take-out coffee cup which you only see in New York that says “We are happy to serve you” in faux Greek letters. I felt like I was spying on my WASPy grandfather from a previous life.

“See…” I said to the boys, “Age is just a number. This guy was 22 and was acting 55 already.” If they did not have a bus to catch, I would have gone on to tell them that one of my all-time favorite quotes is from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (thank you, high school English class):

“The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

Or the less poetic version, which I say with some frequency: “Heaven and hell are states of mind.”

My 55-year old state of mind:  Aging is deliciously liberating. With the years, we’ve acquired the gems of wisdom and patience. Along the way, we’ve unburdened ourselves of judgment – except for when being judge-y is our civic duty, like with teenage offspring or with elected officials. We get to choose who we want to be, and whose company we want to keep. We’ve earned the right to be unshackled from the need to please.

My 50s has been my best decade yet. I am healthier physically and emotionally than I’ve ever been (not difficult, given how unkind I was to myself during my teens, 20s and 30s). Sure, I’m as flawed a human being as I’ve always been. But with practice I’ve learned to detach myself (eventually, at least) from my own drama – and, on a good day, to have a private giggle about it. In winter, I still love to wear my leather shorts over tights and booties, topped by a turtle neck sweater and a fuzzy vest.

I am truly looking forward to the decades ahead, especially to the time we get to move to that commune some friends and I have been scheming to create – and which we are trying to convince our respective spouses to join. The best is yet to come.

My heroines all seem to have a few decades on me: Yayoi Kusama is almost 88, Alice Munro is 85,  Ruth Bader Ginsburg is nearly 84, Gloria Steinem is almost 83, Tina Turner is 77, Patti Smith is 70, Meryl Streep is 69. The list is long. Today, I say a deeply heartfelt thank you to all the badass ladies – known and hidden – who’ve paved the way in every domain.

At 55, I feel fierce – and I’m ready to go-go.

Happy International Women’s Day! With less than a week before my 55th birthday, I am finally launching my blog, at long last. Welcome!

On this day, I reflect back on my much earlier, idealistic days. I was a staunch feminist at age eight (this being the 1960s and all), dreaming of becoming a single mother with seven adopted children, one from each continent. I wanted to be working to ameliorate world hunger and poverty while raising said children. Yes, I was light years ahead of Mia Farrow and Angelina Jolie.

And what of me now? I am a 54-year old married mother of a 14-year old daughter and a 12-year old son, living in the semi-suburbs of Washington, DC. Aside from partaking in the Women’s March a few months back, and signing up to volunteer for the local Planned Parenthood chapter, the most feminist move I’ve taken recently was not global, but decidedly local – as in, inside my household.

Each year on January 1st, for as far back as I can remember, I’ve made New Year’s resolutions. And since having a family, I’ve imposed this tradition on my spouse and offspring. We would each write down our resolutions, share them with the rest of the family, then post them on the wall to remind ourselves throughout the year. This January, I did something different:  for the first time, I decided not to have a numeric body weight goal, something that’s been an integral part of my resolutions ever since my chubby teenage years in Kobe, Japan.

As recently as last year, I would write down a specific number – an impossibly low one (one lower than my wedding date weight) – which would become my holy grail for the year. It was a number I’ve dipped down to maybe once in the past decades, maybe for one day; nevertheless, I rewarded myself with a designer bag on the momentous achievement. I would weigh myself each morning, buck naked (because, you know, underwear is not weightless, and neither is a watch), before showering. I would write down the numerical verdict of the day in my agenda. And I would let the minute fluctuations of that number inform whether I felt good about myself – or not – on any given day.

Now that I had a teenage daughter in the house, continuing to kowtow at the foot of the scale tyrant didn’t seem like a good example to set, especially when I had been telling her that she was perfect, exactly as she was. I was also sick and tired of giving over so much power to that scale – and that number – to tell me how to feel about myself. I felt and looked pretty damn good, especially for a 54-year old!  Yet I was surrendering my self-worth to a piece of metal and plastic, every single day.

So…  I’ve stopped weighing myself altogether.  I know when I’m taking good care of myself. I know when my jeans fit me comfortably. And what matters most is how I feel about myself. And I started noticing that a super-skinny middle-aged or older lady was not attractive. I didn’t want to be scrawny. I wanted to be warm, inviting and huggable – not X-ray thin, regal and forbidding.  This is not to say I suddenly decided to let myself “go.” I was just ready to more fully embrace the food-loving, sensual woman that I have always been.

I realize how much I might have contributed to body- and fat-shaming, by my own words and actions. I realize now that it came from a place of self-loathing (a long story which I will share bit by bit). I’m ready to leave behind that part of me – except for the wisdom it has given me. I hope other women will join me in putting away that scale…  and in trusting the wisdom of our amazing bodies.