📷 An Eye for Life: My Week Online 🇯🇵 #8

Last week on Twitter, Samantha said in a conversation we were having that she was ‘learning to live vicariously in the mistakes.’

The context was about making drafts of what we want to say and checking them before sending so that we could catch spelling errors. And yet it felt profound in what has been a difficult week during a difficult 16 months, where all too often I hear from friends and readers that we are all struggling with mourning a life that doesn’t look like we thought it would back in 2019. I’ve had this conversation with so many people, I’ve lost track. So 2020 didn’t work out the way we thought it would. And maybe 2021 isn’t shaping up how we imagined either. We aren’t alone in feeling this way at all. It just feels like we are sometimes.

I wondered, can I… how can we… look at what we have been through with more acceptance in a way that finds what little good there was or might be and… take comfort in that? Should we throw it all out or save the pieces we are left with and find a way to make them more beautiful?

The analogy I guess I’m trying to make doesn’t apply to literally everything or all of life. I certainly don’t want to gloss over the losses that have changed families and entire communities forever. But I do think there’s something about a life that looks more like a piece of beautiful Kintsugi than one more like a new and flawless piece of pottery, straight from a store - that’s worth considering.

What is Kintsugi? I answered that a bit in this tweet ⬇️ and you can see Samantha’s thoughts about it after that.

Learn more about Kintsugi at this article, buy a kit to try it at home or purchase this piece on Etsy. Writing about it also brought to mind the lyrics from Anthem:

[Leonard Cohen]

Because of researching Kintsugi, I now have Japan on the brain. Here’s a photo from the Japanese portion of LA’s Huntington Gardens. I hope to visit Japan in 2022. Living in LA it’s a much shorter flight than it was when I lived in New York and I can’t wait to finally get there for myself one of these days after reading about it for years. Have you ever been?

There are beautiful photo essays about travel in Japan on Exposure and I also spent a few hours letting those take me away, virtually.

Do we even deserve the cuteness of animals like baby cheetahs [below] dogs, bunnies and pigs?! They always cheer me up!

I found this 13th-century home for sale in the riverside town of Confolens, Charente. It needs some fixing up but what a project it would be!

I learned my friend Jessica’s new home in Philly is one of the city’s historic Trinity Houses and now I want to visit her more than ever. Read about their incredible history at the article below and if you want a good newsletter with travel news and timely tips, hers is terrific!

I discovered Blue Space Is the New Green Space via my friend JoAnna.

I figured out what I’ll be streaming this weekend ⬇️ Decision fatigue is real and I’m always open to new suggestions. What’s your favorite thing to stream right now?

Then again I also have three new books waiting for me, so I might be a 📚 🐛 all weekend. I keep a running list of what I am reading and what I want to read, here.

and I discovered these beautiful photos of the Milky Way:

the heather-covered hills of Scotland from this week’s #ScotlandHour on Twitter and a wish for a weekend that fulfills whatever you need: be it rest, relaxation, fun, or anything else!

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