Benjamin Hourigan

From an interview with Lewis Wolpert, developmental biologist:

why should there be a meaning? I mean, we want a cause as to why we’re here, but I’m afraid there isn’t one. I don’t find it depressing at all. #

It’s exactly what I believe. Unfortunately for me, I do find it depressing, at least when I’m dissatisfied with other aspects of my life (love, career, money), which is almost always. Not believing that there’s any higher meaning puts a lot of pressure on one to achieve material success.

Where others might take their solace in religion, I tend to take mine in fiction, where I can brush off the fantasy that events fall in place according to an overarching plan and purpose as a conceit for the sake of aesthetics or entertainment.

Being in Japan for the last 8 months, where I’ve been not just isolated from the world, but cut off by language from most of the people here, has increased my sense of the importance of family and friendship. In the past I kept to myself, turned down invitations in favor of quiet nights at home, stewed in loneliness, and kept at bay the people I ought to have been close to. I wasted time on media escapism, time I should have spent on conversation, dinners, drinking and dancing.

When I left, I’d been stuck in life and love for a long time, and the only way of breaking free that I could find was to cut loose, to leave without a plan for coming back. Had I chosen a place worth living in, maybe I’d have stayed. But my old home is, from what I hear, among the best of cities. I chose my destination poorly, but my action wisely. Eight months in what may as well have been outer space cleared out my complacency, despair, and my reluctance to live boldly.

There are people I didn’t pay enough attention to while I was in Melbourne, and people I didn’t say goodbye to properly. There’s no excuse, but I’ll try to make amends. I’ll be back next Friday: expect to hear from me.

I love working for Berlitz…

Last week the Umeda school, where I am based, was briefly closed for renovations, so I got shipped out to the Kyoto Ekimae (“station-side”) school for two days. On one of those two days, a student cancelled their lesson after it was meant to begin, so I got paid to go out and walk around Kyoto for two hours.

And this is some of what I saw…

A view towards central Kyoto, looking north up the Kamo river, near the Shichijo-dori bridge.

At both the Nishi Honganji and the Higashi Honganji, it’s difficult to take good photos, because the main halls at each temple are being restored inside giant hangars like this one (at the Higashi Honganji).

Nevertheless, if you look away from the hangars, you can take some decent photos. This is a fountain at the Higashi Honganji. It’s not suffused with holy power, it was just a bright day and I’d forgotten to peel the plastic lens-protector off my new mobile-phone.

One of the east gates of the Higashi Honganji complex. The fountain in front is a sculpture of a lotus blossom.