The Japanese Lover
By Isabel Allende
We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way. But we can clean it up. Happiness is not exuberant or noisy like pleasure or joy; it’s silent, tranquil, and gentle. It’s a feeling of satisfaction inside which begins with self-love.
Why would a wealthy woman in her late seventies give away everything she owned and move from her historic San Francisco mansion into a one-room apartment in an assisted living facility? What was her motivation? What was she looking for? This speculation drew me into Allende’s beautiful story which spans decades and countries to explore how our history, our choices, even our chance encounters, shape and form our motivation.
This book made me think about the beauty in the way lives intertwine. Allende took me deep into the history of two heroines’ lives. And then she invited me, along with them, to let go of that history in exchange for the promises of the present moment.
Cathy told her that the most important thing in life was to clean up one’s own mess, commit oneself a hundred percent to reality, place all one’s energy in the present moment, and to do so right now, immediately. Since her accident, she had learned that there was no point waiting. Her condition gave her the time to think things through, to get to know herself better. To just be, to be in the moment, enjoying the light of the sun, people, birds. Pain came and went, nausea came and went, but for some blessed reason or other, they did not overwhelm her for long. By contrast, she was able to enjoy every drop of water during her shower, the sensation of a pair of friendly hands shampooing her hair, a deliciously cold lemonade on a summer’s day. She did not think of the future, but took each day as it came.
I find it so tempting to ponder the past, to anticipate the future. The more aware I become, the more I see those two exercises taking up a good portion of my free mental space. There is something so paralyzing about living in those two spaces which don’t actually exist. My history can become a collection of detritus held too tightly, regardless how glamorous or valuable. My future becomes nothing more than a wisp of breath, eluding my fearful control.
Alma and Irina, the heroines of this book, finally found their freedom in unshackling themselves from deeply embedded emotions of their past in order to begin trusting in the present moment. Living on opposite ends of the age spectrum, they together help us see it’s never to early, or too late, to embark on a new way of being.