When I was at the junior high school, I wrote down in my graduation essay about my dream to become a professional comedian. I used to watch a variety of comedian shows in the television and studied the quality of laughter. I even joined the comedian club in my university days. That’s how I have been interested in laughter, and its quality, and such, all my life.

I think there are two different types of laughter. One is pure and decent laugher, and other is impure and indecent laughter. The pure and decent laughter raises our vibration while the impure and indecent laughter lowers our vibration. Simply put, the former one is good for our soul, but the latter one is bad for our soul.

Here is one example of pure laughter. We can see them often in babies and animals. Their instinctive reactions make us laugh. Their funny reactions are pure and innocent, not coming with their intention to make us laugh.

Another example of decent laughter. Today when I attended the business class, the instructor gave us a cute laughter. When she introduced herself, she said “I’ve been doing this job for 33 years, and I started this job when I was 5 years old. Now you can calculate my age.” We all laughed because she probably is in her late 60s or even in her 70s. This was a good laughter as a beginning of the class.

These two examples make us laugh without hurting anybody’s feeling.

Other types of laughter, impure and indecent laughter, is intentionally said or done to make people laugh, by making fun of ourselves or others. It might be funny at that time, but we should not forget that somebody might get hurt by that.  

Nowadays the vibration on the planet Earth gets higher than ever. In this situation, nobody can lie or hide their true emotion anymore. People used to hide their true emotion by certain jokes or actions, now they will start revealing their true feelings to public. I like the current situation. It is a blessing. We are entering to the world where nobody gets hurt and nobody needs to hide their true emotion.

When we make others laugh, let’s focus on only pure and decent laughter. We don’t need to make fun of anybody to make others laugh. We don’t need to hit anybody or make ourselves look miserable to make others laugh. Let’s respect ourselves and others. Let’s be honest with ourselves and others. Pure laughter can be found everywhere. Let’s enjoy laughing with pure laughter.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪ 　

Human’s life is like a climbing a mountain. In my image, the top of the mountain is set around the age of 40. That being said, this is only when we set our life span for around 80 years long. Everybody sets their life span differently, so that everybody’s age at the top of the mountain varies.

When we are baby, we start from an easy and gradual slope. We take it easy, taking one step at one time. Baby steps. In this stage, we should fully enjoy every step and every scenery. From the baby’s perspective, everything looks beautiful. Babies see the life as full of adventures and wonders.

As we go by more years, the slope starts getting steeper and steeper. As we become independent, we get free from parents’ supervisions. However, freedom comes with responsibilities. The responsibilities get heavier and heavier on us. Gradually, we start feeling that the life is tough. In this stage, we still don’t see wider visions. Therefore, we sometimes proceed blindly and reach to the dead-end. Then, we need to go back and take another route. Since our physical body is still young and strong, we tend to abuse our body. We tend to take our youth and good health for granted.

Around the age of 40, most of us reach at the top of the mountain. We can take a break here for a while. We can congratulate ourselves for our progress so far. When we look back our former years, we can analyze our pattern and habit. Based on the analysis, we can correct our bad pattern and habits. And, get ready for the later life. 

From there, we still have half to go. It is a downhill. We start noticing we cannot abuse our body anymore. Our body start giving us any kinds of sign for that. We need to slow down our daily life pace. When climbing up the hill in our younger days, we can keep on running, without any tools or supports. Now, when it comes to walking down the hill, we need some types of tools or supports. It is hard to acknowledge and accept the aging process in our physical body. But aging comes with wisdom. Our body might not swiftly work anymore, but we have earned wisdom and technique to cheat in a way. We might find some shortcuts. Our pace might get slower, but we proceed with confidence.

I have started going down the hill in my life mountain. I have noticed some aging signs in my body, here and there. It can be shocking, but at the same time, it happens to everybody. That’s the way it is. All I need do is to accept and smile.

Personally, I feel lucky to have the same age friend whom I can casually talk about my aging and encourage one another. It is always good to have friends to talk about that.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪ 　

Yesterday, when I was writing a story about drying clothes out in the sun, I kept on having the image of my grandpa-in-law. I had visited my husband’s family since 1998, so I had opportunities to spend time with my husband’s grandparents as well.

Every time when I offered to wash the dishes, my grandpa-in-law gently turned down my offer. He said it was his favorite thing to do. The time in washing dishes was his meditation time. He could fully relax. While he was washing the dishes, he would put a gentle smile on his face.

He would take his time on washing the dishes. He would first store the hot water in the sink and wash the dishes in the sink. Then, he would use the gentle flow of water to rinse each dish to complete the washing. All his motions were slow and gentle. I would feel calm by just listening the gentle water flow sound when grandpa-in-law was washing the dishes.

When I visited another Navajo family, the Navajo elder woman told me that she also loved washing dishes. She said washing dishes is her way of showing appreciation. Appreciation for dishes to hold the food, appreciation to the food, and appreciation to the family to share the food together. She told me it is important to keep on showing our appreciation to everything, and never take anything for granted.   

I like the traditional scenery. After having the big meal with family, everybody gets involved in cleaning. By bringing the dishes into the sink, washing the dishes, wiping off the table, and putting the leftover food in the refrigerator. While doing these choirs, everybody is still having a fun conversation.

 In modern life, we tend to prefer a more convenient and faster way in doing our choirs. But let’s not forget that sometimes it is worth to take time in doing it.

♬ Any feedback? (^^♪

In Japan, most people hang the washed clothes out in the sun to dry them. Using a dryer is not common.

Now I live in America, and I have a drier at home. But still, I hang the washed clothes out in the sun whenever I can. When I hang clothes outside, I enjoy getting sun light and smelling the dirt and plants in the yard. And, I like the feeling that I am contributing to protect our Mother Earth by saving electricity.

The modern technology has made our life much more convenient and easier than before. Washing machines and driers are one of them. I don’t want to wash clothes by hand, but at least I can continue hanging washed clothes out in the sun. I want to keep on doing some inconvenient and traditional way of living in order to protect our Mother Earth.

Since 2013, I have used the home made laundry detergent. I have stopped using the manufactured hair products and face creams, replaced by olive oil and coconut oil.

There are some other things that we all can contribute to our Mother Earth.

– Walk whenever we can, instead of driving a car.

– If possible, use compost. We can reduce the amount of trash. And at the same time, we can create the nutritious rich soil that we can use for our gardening.

– Buy the local organic produces and support organic farmers.

There are so many great ideas that we can save our Mother Earth. Let’s often talk about that and share the ideas with many people. Our individual contributions might be small, but when they are accumulated by many people, we can make a huge difference together.

Today, my daughter shared one exciting story with me. At school, one of her classmates was laughing so hard, and at the same time, she was shedding tears. It was my daughter’s first time to witness somebody laughing and crying at the same time. Other classmates were the same as my daughter. All of them watched the girl in their astonished faces. Even the girl told everybody she was astonished too. She never experienced that. They all shared that they didn’t know people can laugh and cry at the same time.

I remember the moment when I laughed so hard and tears came down at the same time. I was so surprised. Because I thought laughing and crying are two different things. I had thought laughing comes from happiness and crying comes from sadness. But, now I know they are not totally separated or different; they are all emotions. And, tears come from our souls when we have a strong emotion.

I told my daughter to enjoy every emotion. Experiencing a variety of emotions is one of the privileges that humans can have. In other words, one of our purposes we reincarnated to the planet Earth is to experience a variety of emotions.

When we go back to the spirit world, everything is calm. As far as I know, when we go back our own spirit homeland, all the residences in the realm are at the same spiritual levels. Everything and everybody are very calm and peaceful. There is no events or opportunities that we as in spirit will not have negative feeling such as anger, jealousy, sadness, or fear.

All the negative feelings are possible only in the place where diverse leveled in spiritual age live together, like the planet Earth. I don’t know any other place where we can reincarnate like the planet Earth. As far as I know, the planet Earth is a very unique place.

Thankfully, our lifetime in the planet Earth is limited. Let’s enjoy our life here in the planet Earth, with fully experiencing a variety of emotions. Once we go back to our spiritual homeland, we are going to miss that.

This year, I witnessed the self-healing ability in trees. I saw it in the two tall trees in theneighbor’s front yard.

Last summer, the trees did not look healthy. Some of the leaves were dried up.

At the beginning of this year, before getting warm, the owner had trimmed all the branches off from the trees. The trees had become completely bald on their top parts. Only the trunk parts were left. I felt sorry for the trees.

However, in the spring time, the trees started putting forth their branches and leaves back on. I had observed their recovering process every day.

By the beginning of summer, the trees had completely back to normal state, even much healthier than last year. Now, the trees have exuberant foliage. I was awed by their self-healing energy.

When I saw these trees’ self-healing ability, I thought about Pluto. Pluto deals with “death and rebirth” and “destruction and regeneration.”

The trees looked like dead when the top parts were all gone. But they were not totally dead. The trunk and the roots were still alive, and they had a desire to come back to life again.

I thought it was a blessing to witness it.

It can be applied to us too. Once in a while, we need to get rid of all the excuses and escape routes, so that we can focus on only our core part, just like the trees did. The trees lost all the detailed parts once, then they focused on the trunk and the roots; their vital energy.

As old people used to tell us, we can learn a lot from the Nature.   

In my school days, I saw the majority of students tend to gather up. Whenever they needed to go to the bathroom, a group of 3-4 students gathered up and went there together. During the lunch time, they gathered up.

I was not like that. I know I am a weirdo. I remember I didn’t feel lonely whenever I was alone in my school days. I had some good friends and I was not spending time alone all the time. But once in a while, I needed my alone time. And I never felt lonely in my alone time.

I took my alone adventure when I was 11 years old. I attended a camp in another town where was far away from my house, all by myself. I never felt scared or lonely because I knew I could make many friends with new people there. Since then, I have enjoyed my alone adventure going here and there. I used to enjoy going to the theaters, museums, and aquariums, alone. I had enjoyed my alone trip within Japan and foreign counties.

When I go somewhere alone, I can attract the people whose energies fit to mine. That is the biggest reason why I love my alone adventure.

There are another benefits to take alone adventure. We can take our time in our favorite situations. When we see the beautiful sunrise, we can spend as much time as we want. When we watch a movie and feel like crying, we can do so without feeling embarrassed to our company. We can easily change our plan based on our gut feelings, without negotiating with our company. The bottom line is we can stay being ourselves in our alone adventure.

Let’s enjoy our alone adventures from time to time. We might find something unexpected and it will be fun.

Today when attended the Ki-Gong class, the instructor introduced us two books. She showed us one page, and it says “do the scariest thing every day”. I don’t remember the book title, but the phrase was familiar to me. After I came back home, I found out that was the quote from Eleanor Roosevelt,

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”

This quote deeply resonated with me today. I thought about the scariest thing for me. At this moment, the scariest thing for me is definitely to advertise my services and myself. Posting my short article in my homepage is one that I feel scared. Posting my short video in my Facebook Page is another scary thing for me. However, through these my small efforts, I can show my services and myself to people through Internet.

The Ki-Gong instructor added her own advice.

You cannot fail anything unless you actually do it.

Yes, she is right. I started my small business with my pure desire to contribute to establishing the better world. My small services might help people to rediscover their true self and their life mission. If I make a mistake in doing something, then I can learn from the mistake.

Doing the scariest thing is much better than doing nothing. By breaking through our walls, we might see some unexpected opportunities or rewards. Let’s cherish our time every day. Our life on the planet Earth is short; way shorter than what we think.

Roses are my favorite flower. When I was living in Japan, I used to buy roses occasionally as a reward for myself. Roses are expensive in Japan so that I could not buy it often. I had wished to have my own rose bushes in my yard in the future so that I can enjoy the energy of roses every day.

When I moved to my current house, my old wish had come true naturally. In my current house, right next to our entrance door, we have red, yellow, and white roses in different sizes. Every morning when we leave the house, the roses see us off with their pretty faces. Every evening when we come back from school or work, the roses welcome us with their gentle fragrance. I feel really blessed.

I thought about the blessings from the land. And I noticed that each land has been offering their unique blessings to us.

I had lived my first 40 years in Japan. My residences in Japan were always within walking distance to the ocean and the beach. The last residence I bought had three windows that were facing to the ocean. Every day after I had a stressful day from the work, I would just open the window, watch the ocean surface, and listen to the sound of ocean waves. By doing so, I would recover my calm state. The ocean had been playing its role as my great natural medicine.

Now I moved to Arizona, and I am far away from the ocean. In the first several years, I had seriously missed the healing energy from the ocean.

But one of those days, I suddenly noticed I am surrounded by another types of the healing energy. They are from the plants in Arizona.

At the current house, we have a spacious yard where we have planted a variety of plants. We have an apple tree and a tree with lots of small green leaves. We have sage, mint, marigold, delphinium, lavender, margaret, and geranium.

I remember when I was visited my friend who had a spacious yard in my childhood, she would pick some green leaves and flowers from her yard and made it a small bouquet and gave it to me as a souvenir. I used to enjoy her small gift. Now I can do the same thing to my friends and share the natural energy with my friends, here in Arizona. 

We tend to take it for granted that we have constantly been receiving the healing energy from nature. So, let’s show our appreciation to their existences.

In Japanese school, we had Moral Education class. In the class, the teacher taught us about the Moral. To me, Moral can be anything relates to sustain a positive and productive human relationship.

The teacher encouraged us to brush up our imagination skills. She said great imagination skills were the must skills when establishing good human relationships.

We performed many simulation lessons in the class. We read the books and listed up the main and sub characters, and thought about what if we were them, what we would feel, why we did this and that. Other times when we had a bully and being bullied situation, we thought about that from each involved person’s point of view. After we did that, we discussed about the alternatives on how they could improve the situations. These simulations were helpful to brush up our imagination skills.

Interesting enough, my daughter has a similar class as Moral education at her school. She is at the 1st grade. The teacher asked the students “what if” questions, such as What if there are only 2 swings and there are 3 students who want to play in the swing during the recess?

Some students answered they would run fast to get the swing first, while other students answered they would let other students play first, and wait for their turn. These are the major two options that everybody can reach. But in this option, one student has to wait for his/her turn. He/she might feel boring during waiting for their turn.

Then the teacher asked them if there are other alternative ways so that everybody can have a good time. With this question, the students thought about it, and they started sharing their alternative ideas. Their alternative ideas were going to the slide, or playing tag with everybody, so that nobody needs to wait for their turn. With these alternatives, everybody can enjoy their recess time. I thought this is a good idea to brush up the students’ imagination skills.

From my personal experiences, I feel reading the creation story is especially helpful to brush up our imagination skills. I know about Japanese creation story and Navajo creation story. I found it interesting because they have many similar messages in each creation story. Each episode of the creation story can be used as a teaching tool. When we think about the situation with using our imagination, we can learn lots of wisdom from doing so. When we fully utilize our imagination skills, we can feel as if the situation was happening to us in real, so that we can experience and feel the character’s emotion.