やわらかく
日々に身を置く
風のままに
Gently—
I place myself inside the day,
and let the wind decide.
It’s never been the big things that saved me.
Not the milestones. Not the accolades.
Not the moments with music swelling in the background.
It’s always been something smaller.
Something softer.
And usually, something ordinary.
A convenience store coffee.
A slice of leftover cake.
The quiet sound of someone breathing beside you who doesn’t need anything from you at all.
These days, I don’t aim to “improve” myself.
I aim to stay close.
To life. To people. To the part of me that still feels everything.
Here’s how I try.
Sleep more.
Not for performance. Not so you can do more later.
Just because.
Because your brain is a slow animal and it needs darkness.
Because dreams are sometimes the only place your body tells the truth.
I sleep in layers.
Curtains drawn. Window cracked just enough to let the night speak.
Sometimes I wake with the faint memory of something important I almost remembered.
That’s usually enough.
Have sex.
Not always.
Not just because it’s late and you’re lonely and the silence is too wide.
But when it’s honest. When it feels like a conversation made of skin instead of language.
I remember one winter in Ljubljana—
the kind of winter that seems to hum beneath your coat—I was staying in a borrowed apartment with cracked tile and uneven heating. The day before, I’d had a small birthday gathering. Someone brought cake, a little lopsided, but sweet.
There was some left over.
That night, she came over.
We weren’t anything official. Just two people orbiting the same kind of sadness.
I gave her a slice of that leftover cake. No candles. No explanation.
Then, for some reason, I sang her a Maroon 5 song—soft, a little out of tune.
She laughed. Then she cried.
I didn’t ask why.
Later, we lay down in our clothes, pressed together but not tight.
It wasn’t about need.
It wasn’t even about desire.
It was simply that neither of us wanted to carry everything alone that night.
And we didn’t.
Go for walks.
In the city, especially.
Around Tokyo. Alone. Slowly.
Sometimes I drift through backstreets in Nakameguro, past shuttered shops and flowerpots left like offerings in front of low wooden doors. Other times, I head toward nowhere in particular, letting the vending machines and crows decide my route.
I stop at a combini, pick up a small coffee, maybe a steamed bun.
I eat it while standing near a river, listening to someone’s radio playing faintly from an upstairs window.
Nothing happens.
But something always shifts.
The weight I didn’t know I was carrying gets lighter.
The city stops asking so many questions.
Dance.
Even if you look ridiculous. Especially then.
In my old Tokyo apartment—tiny, beige, and full of shadows—I used to put on Cornelius or Lamp or something strange from an old playlist and just move. Arms loose. Ankles slow. Sometimes sober, sometimes not. Sometimes with a bit of sake in my system, or half a gummy from a trip abroad still lingering in a drawer.
It wasn’t for joy.
It was for release.
It was for the version of me who still remembered what my body felt like when it wasn’t being watched.
One night, someone left a note under my door:
“You look happy when you dance. I hope you stay that way.”
I kept the note.
Talk to people.
Even when you think you have nothing to say.
Even if it’s just about the weather or the onigiri you regretted buying.
Sometimes I call my sister just to describe the sky.
Sometimes I strike up a conversation with the guy who runs the soba stand near my station.
His name is Tanaka-san. He once told me he plays harmonica in secret.
He’s never invited me to hear it.
But every time he hands me my bowl, I listen for the echo.
Talk to yourself.
Out loud. In whispers. On trains. In bathtubs.
Ask yourself questions.
Answer them badly.
Laugh at how weird your voice sounds when no one else is around.
I do this all the time.
At first, it was a joke. Then it became a habit.
Now, it’s a kind of companionship.
Me talking to me.
Me asking, “Are we okay?”
Me replying, “Not sure. But we’re trying.”
Laugh.
And not just at clever things.
Laugh at burnt toast.
At how clumsy you are.
At the absurdity of crying in a Uniqlo changing room because the lighting was too honest.
I once laughed so hard I fell off a bench in a park near Mitaka.
I was eating an egg sandwich and listening to a podcast about octopuses.
No punchline.
Just a moment when everything cracked open and I remembered how ridiculous it is
to be alive and trying.
Wabi-sabi lesson:
You don’t need to upgrade yourself.
You just need to return.
To what’s already working quietly in the background.
To the body that still moves.
To the voice that answers you at midnight.
To the part of you that sings when no one’s around
and eats cake with strangers
and lets a tree go unnoticed until one day,
it’s home.
Stay human.
Stay soft.
Sleep more.
Everything else can wait.
life 
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