ethnodat, Author at The Cracked Door

What Can We Do to Be Satisfied in Life?

What leads to people feeling satisfied and fulfilled in life? This is a daunting question, but I have been thinking about it a lot recently. I have a potential answer. Based on when I talk with people around the world, some who are satisfied in life and some who are not – I have sensed that one thing seems again and again to be most significant in whether people feel satisfied and fulfilled in their life: feeling connected to others in life-giving relationships.

I don’t know whether generalizing to everyone across all cultures is useful or even possible, but this is a pattern I have been seeing on pretty much whatever continent I visit. Humans crave and find meaning in life-giving relationships.

By being connected in “life-giving relationships,” I mean ones where the person can give life to others and in turn, receive life in those relationships. We tend to be drawn to creating, cultivating, growing, enhancing, etc. of life in the world around us, and we tend to be most fulfilled when we can participate in that process. A sad aspect of contemporary society is that it can often seem to alienate us from these communities.

How to participate will vary widely given the person’s personality and the needs of their community. Some might lead an organization that is doing something beneficial to humanity, but in my experience, this form often gets overemphasized as if it is the primary way to make a difference. Some participate in life-giving relationships by doing something as down-to-earth as sewing clothes or building bricks. It really depends on the person and the community. Humans seem particularly adept at producing new, creative ways to foster life given a new set of circumstances and needs, so the possibilities seem truly endless.

I also mean giving “life” in the broadest sense possible: not just human life but also animals and other forms of life. Some people are drawn towards animals. Some might be drawn towards specific types of humans in specific types of circumstances, such as someone who had to work through a specific hard time in life and gravitates towards helping those who also have a similar experience. All of this will vary widely according to the individual, circumstance, and cultural context.

Literally every source of happiness fades, but in my experience, life-giving relationships seem to be the longest lasting. Some forms of happiness are primarily or exclusively consumptive, and in my experience, these often fade the fastest: material objects, drug highs, etc. Life-giving relationships, in contrast, are participatory for the person. We receive life when we give it, and being in a healthy system of relationships provides the most wholesome forms of satisfaction. When in those relationships, accruing specific material things that help attain that goal help, and some moments, we may just need to unwind some simple pleasures. Absolutely, but these do not form a good basis of satisfaction in one’s life as a whole.

Some potential forms of happiness involve building or refining ourselves: learning/education, self-improvement, even the quest for power, etc. In my experience, the happiness from these tend to last longer than purely consumptive forms, but when done in themselves, they too eventually become vacuous. If you are not plugged into a reason for learning that involves making the world around you better, in my experience at least, learning can lose its shine. Refining and improvements often needs a purpose to attach itself to, and in some way, helping to improve the world around you tends to, in the long run, both the most fulfilling long-term purpose.

Then, finally, you have some forms of happiness that are unhealthy manifestations of the desire for life-giving relationships. Fame as a form of happiness is a good example of this, which are secretly relational states. For example, when one desires fame, most often they desire a relationship where many other people know them and give them adoration and accolades. For a small percentage of people, their way to produce life ends up leading to fame, but when someone pursues fame in itself, they are often pursuing a bastardized version of a healthy system of life-giving relationships.

In contrast to these three types of happiness, life-giving relationships tends to be ultimately the most fulfilling form of happiness, where we are plugged into a system where we both give life to others and in turn receive life ourselves.

How much does it cost you to travel the world? How to Know Whether You Can Afford to Travel the World

This is one of the most common follow-up questions I get asked when I tell people that I am traveling the world. Surprisingly, it’s a lot cheaper than you’d expect.

I find that on average, it costs about USD $20,000 a year to travel the world (or roughly $50 a day). For those of us from the Western countries, it’s far cheaper than a regular life at home. It’s much cheaper than living in New York City for a year, where I was before.

This isn’t necessarily the case for those in places with a cheaper cost of living, but for anyone from those places, keep in mind that there are ways to cut this in half or a quarter. Some people travel even more cheaply, but I find $20,000 to give me the right balance of comfort without spending too much/being too extravagant for me personally.

I base this on a rough ratio of 8-9 months in Global South countries (which tend to have a lower cost of living) and 3-4 months in the Global North or upper income countries where things tend to be more expensive. I personally like this ratio and tend to be more interested in visiting Global South countries anyways. $50 a day is hard to sustain in Western countries. For example, on a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, I blew well past that. But in most of the Global South, one can spend much less than $50 a day, so it averages out at the end of the day (or at the end of the year).

Most people’s reference point for how much it costs to travel are vacations. That’s the only form of travel that they do. But, long-term travel is far cheaper than a couple day or couple week vacation. The longer the trip, you are better able to lower the cost per day. Here is how to reduce three major costs when traveling long-term: transit between destinations, lodging, and food.

Transportation

Transit is often the most expensive portion of a trip. If someone wants to visit a far-flung part of the world, most likely they will fly there (unless they prefer taking a long time to get there). Flights are often one of the most expensive single purchases.

When traveling long-term, though, you fly sparingly. You may need to initially fly to the region of the world you want to visit, but once you are there, you can mostly take buses or trains between places. For example, if you’d like to visit Southeast Asia, it’s best to pick a city in Southeast Asia that has the cheapest flights you can find. If you’re coming from North America, though, that flight is still likely to be pretty expensive: maybe $1,000-$2,000. That’s a one-time purchase, though. Once you are there, you can go between cities or districts by bus (or sometimes train), often for under $10 or $20. Such bus rides may take several hours, but they will get you to the new destination.

Island regions like Oceania or the Caribbean form exceptions to this: sometimes the only way in and out of an island is by flying. You often need to fly between the islands, increasing the complexity of visiting those regions, but for most of the world, you have to pay the upfront cost to get there, and transportation is pretty cheap after that.

Now, I only need to buy expensive flights when I jump to a new region of the world. For example, if I am done with the Old World and want to cross an ocean into North or South America, that jump will require another initial expensive flight. Otherwise, once I am in a region, I can move over to a new region slowly with local transportation.

In general, traveling switches the trade-offs one has to make when on vacation. On a vacation, people often really want to visit a specific location: they want to visit that city they had always wanted to visit or that specific national park. If they don’t visit it on their week or two-long vacation, they won’t see it, and in some cases, they could well never have another chance when they are in this region of the world anyways. Thus, many find it worth it to eat the cost and just visit that place on their vacation. This puts you at the mercy of the market on how much it costs to fly to that location.

I still have my top destinations, but when traveling the world, there are multiple places A, B, and C that I also want to visit even if they are not my favorite. If one of them happens to be cheaper, I can go there next. Once there, maybe the price to go to my favorite destination will suddenly go down. I can wait to see my absolute favorite places and visit the cheaper place first because I have more time.

Lodging

For most people, the next largest expense when traveling is lodging. Lodging is often cheaper when you do long-term stays of several weeks or even several months rather than several days. Most often the price per day goes down.

It is usually also cheaper in the long run to choose places with a kitchen rather than hotel rooms. That way you can cook meals yourself, which significantly reduces daily costs. In much of the world, I find Airbnbs to be the cheapest option, and generally staying in a home provides you a kitchen with which to cook your own food. But in some parts of the world, Airbnbs are unusually expensive and in other booking sites might be cheaper, so it does vary.

I rarely stay in hostels, only doing so if I absolutely have to (and I’ve only had two in two of the 36 or so countries I have visited so far). I’m not 19 anymore and find that I prefer my own space. I am naturally social while I am out and about, so when I go home, I prefer a quiet place to unwind when I need to be by myself. That said, some people can cut my $20,000 a year expense in half by staying in hostels, and others by a quarter by mixing hostels with pitching a tent somewhere some nights. That’s great for them, and I do enjoy both camping and communal living. But I can only handle doing it for a few nights before I prefer the comfort of my own place. It’s worth it to me to have my own space.

Food

Learning the local cuisine is a fantastic idea, yet cooking your own food is much cheaper than eating out all the time. Unlike on a vacation, where most people eat out every single meal, generally, I find balancing tending to cook your own food most foods to be the cheaper option. In some places, I try to eat out maybe one meal a day, and in more expensive parts of the world, one meal every few days. In most places, though, whether that place has a high or low cost of living, I generally find that I can buy a week’s worth of groceries for the cost of a single meal at a restaurant, so if you do the math, eating three meals a day, that means eating out is 21 times as expensive than cooking on your own.

The other trick with food is to determine cheap but healthy foods you like in the places you visit. Some foods are also healthy and generally cheap everywhere you go, making them my go-to foods to first look for when in a foreign country. I have found, for example, that rice and lentils are generally cheap everywhere and a really healthy source of carbohydrates and protein respectively. They also keep for a long time and are portable if you need to carry leftovers to your next destination. Thus, I often use them as my basis for the dishes I cook, adding spices and other flavors that I can find cheap in that locale to build the dishes I cook myself. (Eggs too are often a good cheap source of protein, but I prefer lentils because they are more portable and don’t go bad or break easily.)

Similarly, the cost of different fruits and vegetables will vary widely in different parts of the world. Often the trick with fruits and vegetables is to just walk through the grocery store or market and see which ones are cheap at that time. Buy those and try them. You may learn about new foods you’ve never heard of. At the same time, there is one fruit and two vegetables that are almost always cheap: bananas, carrots, and lettuce/cabbage (and sometimes oranges). When in doubt, look for these.

In the world of healthy fats, peanuts tend to be another cheap option no matter where you go. If you check your labels properly for the peanuts to ensure no added sugars or other unhealthy additions, all of these tend to be rather healthy as well.

So, lentils, rice, bananas, carrots or lettuce, and peanuts have become my go-tos. These are almost always cheap in pretty much every country I visit. It’s especially helpful to have a list in your head when all the food at a grocery store is in a foreign language. For example, if I don’t have time that day to wander the fruit aisle looking at every fruit, I just grab some bananas.

Finally, be aware of which places sell the cheapest foods wherever you are, because it varies between cultures. In some cultures, supermarkets are the cheapest places to buy food. In other places, street markets where farmers sell what they grow tend to be much cheaper. Sometimes, some foods are cheaper to buy at the grocery store, and other foods like fresh produce are cheaper to buy at a market. It will depend, so one aspect of learning to shop in a new culture is to figure out the best combination of places to optimize costs.

Conclusion

These are the techniques I have honed to reduce cost while traveling the world without destroying the quality of my experience. Different people have different preferences, so if you do travel, you should explore what techniques work best for you. Either way, traveling the world is surprisingly cheap. When people think about how much it would cost to travel the world, they often take the cost of a vacation and extend it to their whole life, but the cost per day of long-term travel is a lot lower than a vacation. At around USD$20,000 a year, you may even find that traveling the world is cheaper than living for a year in wherever you call home.

The Woman in the Green Dress (A Short Story)

I stood there transfixed. I didn’t know why. I hadn’t been dumbfounded like this before for a long time. What was it about her?

She stood in front of me smiling. She had long, straight black hair down to her shoulders. There her hair ended with a slight fold like a J on her shoulder, and the straps of her green dress started. It was an elegant green shawl with a matching green gown that extended all the way down to her legs, where it seemed to almost transition into the green from the forest.

“Why are you dressed so nicely to walk through the jungle like this?” I asked. And at like 6:00 am, I thought to myself.

“Oh thank you,” she chirped back. “I’m on my way home from my night out.”

“Where do you live? I see nothing but banana trees.”

“Come. I can show you.”

She grabbed my arm and started walking. I hesitated at first, but I had nothing better to do. I wasn’t really feeling my morning jog anymore anyways.

As she walked, it seemed more like she was gliding through the shrubs rather than taking steps. She moved with the ease of someone who was at home in this place.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

I explained how I am an American on vacation to Chiang Mai, needing a break from the constant churn of work.

“Humanity just constantly spins in an endless cycle,” she replied.

“Where are you from, and what do you do?” I asked, but she just grabbed my arm.

“I’ll show you,” she beckoned. I got confused as she took me deeper into the forest, where it seemed even less likely someone would live.

Suddenly, she stopped, in front of a massive banana tree.

“This is my home,” she explained. I began to reply, “Where? In the tree?” There was nothing here, just the forest. But as my words came out, she waved her index finger in front of my mouth, whispering “Shh.” I got really sleepy all of the sudden and collapsed into her arms.

Next thing I remember, I woke up on a bed in a bedroom with yellow walls.

“Where am I?” I screamed.

She walked over and sat on the bed next to my feet. “This is my home.”

“What?! Where did you take me?”

“This is my home, inside the banana tree.”

I screamed confused, but she whispered to me to go back to sleep saying she would explain when I was ready.

That was how I first came here. When I woke up next, I learned that she lived many many years ago but now inhabited this tree.

She said she once was a living person, but after her death, she realized how much humans stress themselves with the constant churn: to produce more, build more wealth, gain more status. Like a wave constantly hitting against the shore in an endless cycle. Now, she lives in the banana tree in peace and tranquility. She can go out and visit the humans when she wants to watch our flurry of activity, but she has mostly just enjoyed the peace of being in the forest.

“You sound like you need a break,” she explained. “So, you can stay with me as long as you’d like. I have everything your mortal body could possibly need here: food, water, a bed to sleep. But you can leave anytime you like.”

Sometimes I do go out for a few days to see the human world again. But mostly, I find peace in the tranquil state of existence under the banana tree with her by my side.

When I do go into the city, I find signs with a picture of my face labelled as a missing person. By this point, the humans must presume I’m dead. But they can only view “living” as producing within their system of constant churn, so it makes sense they would view my existence as a type of death. But I have really never felt more alive in my life.

Merry Christmas

For my “post,” this week I’d like to wish everyone a merry Christmas. I hope you have a great holidays, no matter how or which ones you celebrate.

Our City Is a Womb (A Short Story)

Visiting OHD Museum, an art museum in Magelang, Indonesia, I saw this piece of art: “*Reflion”* by Meretas Solusi. This story popped into my head to explain the piece. I am not sure if it’s anywhere near what the artist was originally going for, however.

What even is this place? I sit drinking my glass of wine on the edge of my window overlooking the drop-off. Before me is a vast forest, and in the horizon, I can make out the nearest city. It looks like another big blob in the sky. Tons of houses facing the edge of a human-made cliff, just like mine.

Our city is a womb. Are we a society that never truly left its home? We are too afraid of what our people did to the world when we did venture out. Maybe it’s better to stay inside.

This endless forest, this is what we created. I can see the trees swaying in the wind. I am a little too high up to see the forest floor, but I see the occasional perched bird in the trees fly away. The forest looks green. I still remember when the trees were an unholy orange. It took us decades to grow it back, and if staying inside the confines of the city is what is necessary to keep safe, then so be it.

I am old, though, so this is much easier for me to say. The youth are the ones who want to venture back out. They feel confined by the city. Yes, we have paths leading to the other cities, but these are not enough. They yearn to explore the world of the trees, birds, and mountains. I can’t blame them. I lived in a time when this was common. I wish we could venture back out without creating the same problems we did before.

They will send scientists and filmmakers into the world, trained in how to leave no trace in the wilderness to take videos and pictures. Our city consumes clips of strange animals and majestic landscapes with the same carnivorous energy we once hunted each other with. Many youth want to be on their crew of adventurers, but only a handful get selected. They become the new celebrities in our cloistered world.

I wish there was a way to send more out without creating the same consumptive craving that plagued humanity for centuries. The Council seems skeptical. Being older, like me, they all saw the perils humanity could unleash. They treat them like a fallen piece of wood to be rehammered back into place. That isn’t fair to them. They are just curious and want adventure. Every generation is like that when they are young. They see beauty and want to live in it up-close. If only we could.

I take another sip of wine.

Haikus as a Three Line Story Part 4: Blurring the Distinction between the Lines

This is the fourth and final chapter in a four part series about my friend and my experience writing a haiku a day for six years. In each part, I outline a different type of haiku we often write. Other parts of the series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

In all the previous types I have discussed, each line is a single, unique thought, but we also wrote haikus that blur the distinction between lines. Here thoughts, phrases, or even words straddle multiple lines. This often gives the haikus a distinct cadence or rhythm, as if the previous line falls or bleeds into the next line.

My words keep hyphen-

Ating. My eyes always dash-

Ing to the next line.

(This poem is about blurring the distinction between lines, intentionally hyphenating between lines. The “ing” verbs give it a feel of rushing around the corner at each line break.)

The moon shed tears of

Happiness. Hours to her-

Self in seclusion

(In this poem, breaking the word “herself” allows the read to simultaneously think about the phrases, “Hours to herself in seclusion”, “Hours to her”, and “Self in seclusion”.)

Swelling patrio-

Tism and pride: cancer in our

Body politic

*In this one, the sudden shift mid-word to the second line helps represent the disorientation when thinking about patriotism in our country.)

Considering the

Strange world we live in, why choose

To stay in one place?

(Originally published here. Here, the phrases in the sentence jump between lines, representing the desire to travel.)

Conclusion

There are many, many more ways to use a three-line haiku structure to tell a story. The four types of haikus discussed over this series are only some of the styles of haikus we have written over the years, but they give a sense of the complexity and adaptability this form can have. Three lines may seem simple, but there are a lot of options.

Haikus as a Three Line Story 3: Connections, Juxtapositions, and Non-Sequiturs

This is the third chapter in a four part series about my friend and my experience writing a haiku a day for six years. In each part, I outline a different type of haiku we often write. Other parts of the series: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.

Sometimes we combined several unconnected ideas. Maybe, we drew some kind of parallel or or juxtaposition like some traditional Japanese haikus. Other times, we intentionally merged unrelated ideas to create non-sequiturs. I often even took three phrases from books, articles, ads, or other poems and put them together to see what kind of poem would emerge.

Here are a few examples of each:

Connections and Juxtapositions

Tick tock of the clock

With the faint trickle underneath

Of a gushing stream

(Originally published here. This juxtaposes the noises from the clock and the stream. It was a reference to the noises I heard when visiting a clock store next to a stream in Kyoto, Japan.)

The Hermit

To stand here alone

In the desert that’s my life

In search of a path

(This one establishes a connection between the hermit’s life and the narrator’s life.)

I’m like a glacier:

Slow-moving til you get to

My ice-cracking tip.

(Originally published here.)

The cold wind howls

Blowing leaves off the trees, that

Are my inner soul.

(These use a direct simile, metaphor, or analogy to make its comparison.)

Setting up a Premise

The first line of these haikus establish a premise that the final two lines then define or in some way comment on, another strategy to connect thoughts together:

Joys of sleeplessness:

You get to marinate in

Every useless thought

Shores of Babylon:

While the just weep for Zion

I’m finally home.

Conjure the devil:

You better know what you want

He certainly won’t

Tragedy of life:

Everyone is fighting for

What they think is right.

Non-Sequiturs

I frequently cobbled together interesting five and seven syllable phrases from newspaper articles, billboard ads, books, etc. to see what kind of narratives or meanings would emerge by putting them together into a poem. Normally, when writing a haiku, we have a feeling, idea, or narrative that we are trying to convey, and we figure out how to mold that into the haiku’s stringent “requirements.”

But sometimes, I enjoyed turning that process inside out. I would start with words themselves and see what kinds of meanings could emerge from putting them together in different and interesting ways.

Do more than see. Seek.

The assent to the finite.

Desire to create.

The hustle is real

You will need experience

Ride for free after

(This second one is originally published here. I pulled each line of these haikus from ads I saw on billboards around town. To me, they represent the artificial, consumerist language common in the ads that bombard our daily lives.)

Desire to create

Nothing mattered except life

Self-interest undermines

The forgotten fire

Took almost nothing along

The road not taken

Hello to radiant

You could be solowaving

Get your FYP

(This final one is originally published here. These next two are compilations of phrases from articles and books to see what new narratives emerge when taken out of their original context and put together in this order as a haiku like this.)

Ineffableness

Immeasurability

Deification

(Another form of non-sequitur: three words, two five syllables long and one seven syllables long. I put them together into a haiku poem to see what kinds of narratives emerged in that process.)

Haikus as a Three Line Story Part 2: Twists

This is the second chapter in a four part series about my friend and my experience writing a haiku a day for six years. In each part, I outline a different type of haiku we often write. Other parts of the series: Part 1, Part 3, and Part 4.

The first two lines of these haikus set up an initial pattern and the final line breaks this pattern. This follows the broad Rule of Threes, a common technique used for jokes among many other forms of writing.”My three favorite things are breakfast burritos, listening to vinyl records, and getting a call from a number you don’t recognize.” This last one completely breaks the pattern established by the first two. The twist at the end could be funny, ironic, express the depth of an emotion, or have all sorts of other effects.

Here are a few examples of the types of effects we have used twists for:

For Humor

Cherry blossoms bloom.

Pink pedals cover the ground,

And sneeze out my nose

(In this one, the two lines establish the beautiful cherry blossoms, recalling traditional Japanese haikus, but the final line breaks that poetic pattern completely. On the block in Brooklyn where I lived, people planted cherry blossoms. When they bloomed in the spring they were gorgeous, but they also caused me horrible allergies. This poem describes the contrast of loving to see the flowers but at the same time, being made sick by them.)

Let us venture forth.

Hoist the anchor. Sail into

Abysmal failure.

(The first two lines invite the reader to join the narrator on an adventure with an implied hopeful energy, but the twist at the end negates that. Is the narrator pessimistic about the trip or just prefers to head straight into failure? That’s up to interpretation.)

Rugged pointillism

Imprinted onto my feet.

I must sweep my floor

(In this one, each line adds new meaning to the poem significantly building its meaning. The first line establishes that the poem is about abstract art. The second line puzzlingly indicates that it’s on my feet, and the third line explains what happened: I must sweep my floor because it’s so dirty that it’s caused dirty impressions on the soles of my feet.

For Contemplation

After finally

Catching you here in my trap,

Why do I feel bad?

(The first two lines establish a kind of glee in the victory of catching someone in their trap, but the final line twists this, showing that the narrator finally caught the reader, they feel guilty instead of victorious.)

To have faith is to

Live in the constant fear

That you will lose it.

(Originally published here. The twist at the end establishes a key characteristic of faith: that it is built on its opposite fear that one would lose that faith.)

Healing emulates

Even from what might be the

Most painful venom

(Originally published here. The twist at the end is that venom of all things is the source from which the healing emulates from.)

Haikus as a Three Line Story: One Way to Write a Haiku (Part 1 of a New Series)

This is the first chapter in a four part series about my friend and my experience writing a haiku a day for six years. In each part, I outline a different type of haiku we often write. Other parts of the series: Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

As I have already discussed in a previous article [], my friend and I have written a haiku a day for the last six years. This has been an incredibly transformative experience, and here I will focus on how we use the haiku format to tell stories.

At the end of the day, haikus are a way to use three lines to tell a story. Each new line provides an opportunity to transform the previous line, whether that be a twist or punchline breaking an already established pattern, continuation or intensification of the theme in the previous line, or something else entirely. At the same time, different haikus emphasize the first, second, or third line as the most important line in that story. The opportunities are truly endless.

Over the next few articles, I will discuss different forms of stories we might tell. This article will start with telling a story through the continued revelation of a theme.

Haiku Type 1: Continued Revelation of a Theme

The most obvious style or narrative to tell in a three-line haiku is one of continuation: introduce the theme in the first line and in each subsequent line reveal further details to make the theme clearer. This forms the most basic or bedrock version of a haiku that you compare the other styles against.

Sometimes, the new lines can further reveal the details of the theme or topic being explored. For example, the later lines could abstract the tangible observation in the first line. If the first line is itself abstract, later lines might instead provide specific examples or imagery of that theme. Or, it could provide the context in which the writer (or at least the narrator) was thinking of the items established in the first two lines. Here are a few examples of each:

Going from detailed to Abstract

The lone seagull fades

Into the vast thundercloud’s

Forceful harmony

(Originally published here. These first two lines provide specific imagery, and the final line connects the seagull’s moment with the concept of harmony.)

This winding dirt road

What wonders I must go see

To explore the world

(Originally published here. The first line starts with a vivid image of being on a road, and the second two lines connect it to a theme of exploration.)

All this background noise

Droning all around to sell

Yet another myth

(The second line provides more context for the scene, establishing that the noise is caused by sellers, and the third line connects the theme to the abstract idea advertisement as a form of mythmaking.)

New job, new projects

New toolkits, new people with

New idols they serve

(As a list poem, the final line is a continuation of items on the list, but it also establishes and summarizes the poem’s theme of work as a form of idolatry.)

Drop the heavy box

Shards of glass fly everywhere

Hope is laid to rest.

(The first two lines describe a moment, and the final line connects that imagery to broken hope. This summarizes the key theme of the poem.)

From Abstract to Specific Examples

In this type of poem, the final lines that provide specific examples or imagery of an already abstract initial lines:

I lie in the shade

Of your blistering haiku

No rest from the heat

(Originally published here. This haiku’s final line concludes with a new piece of imagery; this time about the feeling of heat.)

Always bursting through

The cracks of your perspective,

The light will shine through

(Originally published here. The second two lines add visual imagery of what is bursting through from the first line.)

My thoughts could kill me:

The sea of despair tugs me;

They hold me under…

(This final line concludes with the vivid image of despairing thoughts drowning the narrator.)

Emotional case

But I can’t talk about it

A weight inside me

(Originally published here. This final line also concludes with what it feels like to have such intense emotions that one cannot talk about.)

Reflecting on the Experience

In these poems, the later lines that provides the context in which the narrator or author is thinking about the earlier lines:

The half moon window

Betrays the glow of night sky

Comforting my thoughts.

(Here the final line shows the narrator’s perspective on and relationship with the moon they have been looking at.)

A blink of an eye

Everything can change so fast

For the good or bad

(In the final line, the narrator evaluates their stance on the sudden change described in the first two lines.)

Joys of sleeplessness:

You get to marinate in

Every useless thought

(The final two lines demonstrate the narrator’s stance on sleeplessness.)

These are all different techniques where the final lines continue to reveal the theme of the first line or lines, whether that be by broadening or abstracting the theme, narrowing it, providing rich imagery, or providing a type of reflection.

What My Friend and I Have Learned Writing a Haiku a Day for the Last Six Years

Six years ago, my friend and I started writing a haiku a day. We wanted to practice the muscle of writing, and a short poem like a haiku was something we could feasibly do once a day: it really only takes a minute or two to write out a haiku. Little did we know how much this would transform our writing and become one of the most useful meditative habits we did in our lives. We would recommend anyone interested do the same.

We’ve done it for many years. I almost think of us as having different eras. Over the months and years, we each focused on different things or tried different styles. Looking back, it feels like looking through the photo album of different eras in our lives. Here are some the major lessons we learned writing a haiku a day:

How to Write Succinctly

Writing haikus forced us to write succinctly. Haikus are short. They forced us to compress complex points and stories into only a few words and syllables. In the classic form, you have three lines and 19 syllables to get all my thoughts down. An idea or impression that might normally take me one or two paragraphs to describe, we must whittle down into only a few words. So the crucial question becomes, what about our message is most important and how to get that across as succinctly as possible?

Notice the Simple Moments of Life

It also helped us see the world anew. It became a way to notice the little experiences in life that glide by during the day. We would have to pause to reflect on them long enough to form them into a coherent poem. Traditionally, Japanese haiku writers wrote about the subtleties of nature. We did not always do that, but writing haikus still forced us to reflect on the subtle, little moments in life that we normally regulate to the background. A quirky social moment that passed as quickly as it came, a short fleeting feeling that one has before getting up to do something else, etc. We both often live with our head in the clouds, so being in the moment had a meditative effect on us.

How to Be Disciplined about Writing

Writing is a discipline, and like any discipline, practice is the best way to get better. Practicing writing, even if only through a little haiku, we noticed our writing improving significantly over the years. We not only improved our ability to write haikus but also in other forms of poetry and in other forms of writing. Stories, essays, even emails at work, these all got easier and better.

How to Build Other Habits

We wrote a haiku every single day. Our fun days, our awful days when some crisis happens, a day we’re busy at work, it doesn’t matter. We wrote a haiku on that day. This took discipline to do and taught us how to build other habits. I found the best way to build habits personally is to do it a little every day, and the best way to do something every day is to set aside a consistent time in the rhythm of my day to do it. New jobs, the pandemic, traveling the world, and other major life changes might completely change my daily rhythm, but no matter what schedule I had, I would make sure I found time to write a haiku.

Creativity Is Contagious

I noticed that nothing inspired me to write haikus than writing haikus. Especially on a long walk or even a long flight, my mind would wander and think about a nice haiku. This would inspire me to think up even more haikus, sometimes on the same theme, sometimes completely different. This would spur me to write even more haikus, and in a few minutes, I might write several dozen haikus before my inspiration slowed back down. These led to some of my favorite pieces.

Creativity energy is contagious like this. Creating catalyzes more creativity. When I had ideas, I would come up with more, or when I heard my friend’s creative ideas, it would spur more. Being in spaces full of creative energy is most important to creating. This includes being around other creatives but also open spaces where my mind can wander like a long walk, drive, or bike ride through the city.

Helping Ensure People Have a Positive, Non-Judgmental Experience Is the Essential to Whether They Enjoy Creative Writing

I also introduced other haiku activities with many other friends, and I have learned how essential a positive, welcoming environment is to people’s relationship with writing haikus. How much someone enjoys writing a haiku is based pretty much entirely on how validated they feel that their haikus are.

For example, I created a game called “Apples to Haiku”, a variant of the “Apples to Apples” but with haikus. A judge comes up with a topic for a haiku. Everyone else writes a haiku based on that topic, and the judge determines their favorite one. This game can be fun, but something about the game mechanic seems to lead to a few players’ haikus getting routinely chosen and others’ almost never chosen. The former people love the game and often grow to really enjoy writing haikus; whereas, the latter usually hate it and grow to dislike haiku writing. They will almost always be the first to give up on the idea of writing a haiku, internalizing the idea that they are “bad” at it.

Overall, when writing haikus, the external validation of one’s work seems to be the most significant factor in whether they like or dislike the activity. People seem to look to others, especially in the early stages of starting to write haikus, to determine whether they are “any good at them” and use that to construct their self-image of the activity. Thus, I stopped playing competitive haiku games like Apples to Haiku but would focus on cooperative or affirming haiku activities where everyone wrote haikus together, building off each other’s ideas. My cooperative favorite haiku game of one where one person writes the first line of haiku, the next person creates the second line, and so on (hundreds of years ago, Japanese aristocrats may have played a much more specific version of this, but as far as I can tell, their version was competitive). This is positive and affirming, where “the game” is to figure out how to form an interesting haiku together. This leaves people feeling inspired rather than discouraged.

Seeing the Contours of Our Lives

Finally, looking back at our haikus makes me reminisce about our lives over the last several years, kind of like looking through a photo album. Different major life events came and went: the highs of starting a new relationship, then the lows of the breakup, or the promise of a new job slowly turning into the slog we hate, etc. All reflected in the tone of our haikus.

Our approach to writing haikus also fluctuated over time. We might have a few months where one of us really enjoyed a certain style of haiku. For example, my friend went through a phase where each day, he would pick a tarot card, look at the image drawn on it, and write a piece based on it. This gave him inspiration for a couple months.

I went through a phase where I would assemble interesting five and seven syllable phrases from articles, titles of books, or even advertisements I saw during my daily commute into a haiku. I went through another phase where I read poets from around the world (ranging from classical Chinese poets to Syrian modernists to traditional Japanese haikus) and took specific lines in these poems that stood out to me and wrote haikus based on them in my own perspective and style. I even had a programming phase where I wrote poems in a programming language like Python or Java.

Conclusion

Writing daily haikus has been transformative for both of us, and I would recommend any reader try it. It’s not that hard once you get the hang of it. Now, after doing it for many years, we have realized how what we got out of it changed over the years. We made it our own in surprisingly different ways during different times in our lives and strongly recommend anyone develop their own ways to do it. You’ll never know where it will take you.

(Interested in reading the haikus, many of them are here. In my next post, I also plan to go through a number of haiku examples over the years, so you can also stay on the lookout for that.)