sfumature by frauBlucher on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
I recently watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a Japanese documentary about 85 year old Jiro. Jiro is a master sushi chef with an exclusive restaurant in Tokyo. He encapsulates the concepts of dedication, purpose and mastery. The most memorable phrase that he says in the documentary (as captioned into English) is “ultimate simplicity leads to purity”. This is a concept that came up again as I listed to The Wisdom of Tenderness last week.
I’ve been wondering about the value of purity and the challenge of simplicity. When I look up the word pure in the dictionary, it is related to the concept of freedom from blemish or influence. In this stimulating world of multimodal communication and opportunities for excitement both virtually and physically, what value do we place in purity. Do we have appreciation for simplicity?
I don’t have the answer but I invite you to think of what parts of your life you’d like to keep pure, undiluted, free. I propose that it’s okay to choose simplicity because it is a component of being balanced. It is okay to experience the moment without fighting to capture it. Extending the concept, purity means aligning who you are online and off. My favorite definition of pure from the Merriam Webster dictionary is “being thus and no other”. With the opportunity for anonymity, exploration of identity, and detachment presented by the virtual world, it is easy to forget that you are online is part of who you are.
As you navigate the online world, I invite you to be thus and no other.