For Myself Rather Than for the Earth hr669

 

I am stingy. I switch off the lights, turn off a faucet, and shut the refrigerator door as soon as I finish using them. I mend holey socks and replace loose elastic strings on pajama pants instead of buying new ones. Whether at home or at a restaurant, I never leave food on my plate. I finish drinks completely, too. People in Japan where I live tend to leave a small amount of drinks in a glass at a restaurant as if it were good manners. I strongly oppose it.

I assume my stinginess had been nurtured by my grandparents who raised me. They were super duper stingy for whom I can be no match. Basically our house was in darkness because they wouldn’t use electricity. Even at dinner time, we turned on the least necessary light for the table and ate our house-grown vegetables mainly. My grandparents were neither vegetarians nor poor. They were quite wealthy for that matter. They lived like that because they wanted to. Being thrifty was their principle.

My grandmother spent most of her day mending something. I don’t recollect that she ever bought new clothes. She was wearing old kimonos that she had kept patching or sewing up a rent for years. If one of her kimonos got to the state where it was too tattered to be worn, it transformed into dusters by her. She mended old futons to keep using, stitched up old towels to make them dust cloths, and washed used disposable plastic bowls of instant noodles to use them as pots for plants in the front yard. She never wasted anything and hardly threw away anything. The scary thing was, she was an amateur compared to her husband.

My grandfather was wearing old shoes with a hole and a worn-out jacket with drooping front pockets when he went out. At the department store, he would exclaim in a loud voice, “How expensive!” on every merchandise he saw, and go home without shopping for anything although he had plenty of money. He used to take me with him there when I was little and I hated to be with him as I was so embarrassed at his behavior. He sometimes ate out on his way home from an errand and often took leftovers home with him in a doggie bag. He would give it to me as if it had been a nice souvenir. Inside of the bag were always meager pieces of food, some of which were half bitten off. I was impressed by his courage to ask the server for a doggie bag to take this kind of leftover each time. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that he wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed but proud of what he was doing. He just didn’t care what people thought about him or how he looked to them. He was confident in what he did and how he looked. His attitude appeared that his way was the right one and others’ were wrong. With that belief in his mind, he enjoyed his way immensely.

Lately, I feel that the times have been catching up with my stinginess. As companies and governments have promoted high-sounding agendas such as a sustainable society or an eco-friendly environment, more and more people are considering food loss and energy conservation. They are shopping by bringing their reusable eco bags and using old stuff instead of throwing them away. But I sense my way is slightly different from others. I am stingy not for public interest. It’s simply my natural way that I like to take. I may look embarrassing and laughable to others, but I would rather be true to myself. I don’t think it’s worth giving up our true selves by prioritizing how we look to others over what we really want to be. And I suppose my grandparents felt the same way. I have finally been made to realize that.

Shiny Worn-out Shoes hr646

 Heaps of old jackets, skirts, shirts and dresses that I no longer wear are sitting in the back of my wardrobe. All of them are bargains and out-of-date. Even though it’s said fashion recurs in a cycle, they are too old and worn to be put on again. And yet, I can’t throw them away.
In addition to a memory that each one of them holds, I feel guilty to throw away what is still somehow usable by keeping its original form. That sort of my own rule applies not only to clothes but to everything, from food to a cardboard box. I just can’t waste anything. Recently, I have often seen a notice on the table in a restaurant, which says ‘Clear your plate for the earth.’ or ‘Remember again the old don’t-waste-food spirit.’ As a person who is too cheap to leave food on a plate, I always wonder since when Japanese people stopped clearing their plates and forgot the don’t-waste spirit. I’ve practiced it all my life as a habit. A bus person might mistake my finished plates and cups for clean ones because not a bit or a drop remains there when I leave the table.
I attribute it to my grandfather’s DNA. I lived with my grandparents when I was a child and I used to go out with my grandfather. His black leather shoes were totally worn-out. They were not as bad as Chaplin’s but a tip of the shoe had a hole. No matter how often my grandmother asked if he should get a new pair, he was adamant that he could still walk in his shoes. For him, it didn’t matter how he looked in them but whether they were usable or not. Since he kept putting on those shoes with a hole, my grandmother had no choice but to polish them for him. As a result, a weird item as shiny worn-out shoes came into existence. My grandfather would take me to a department store in the city in those shoes and strolled around grandly. Even as a small child, I was embarrassed by his shoes and hated to go out with him.
It wasn’t about money. He had enough money to buy new shoes. On the contrary, he was a rich man who had quite a few properties. That meant his shiny worn-out shoes weren’t necessity. Whether wearing them was his hobby or his principle is still a mystery.
It’s more than a decade since my grandfather passed away. I wonder how the world would be like if people around the world put on worn-out shoes as a common practice. Goods wouldn’t be consumed so much, the number of factories would be less, and more forests would remain. There would be less CO2 emissions, climate change would be delayed, and wildfire and a new virus would be sporadic. All it takes is us wearing worn-out shoes. The problems are solved.
Regrettably, I don’t have the courage to do so. I’m too self-conscious about how I look to others. I don’t want to be looked down on by my looks. Even if my actions led to the destruction of the world, I would like to stroll about a tinseled city and show off by dieting and dressing myself in fashionable clothing. Am I a senseless person? I wonder how my grandfather feels looking at me from above.

Price of Greed hr572

According to my parents, I was such a sullen infant who always put a long face. I had the habit of uttering “Butch!” as if to show dissatisfaction, and I received ‘Butch’ as my first nickname from my parents. When I started talking, I was a child who constantly grumbled. My mother’s impression was that I complained about anything whenever I opened my mouth. Indeed, when I recall my childhood memories, they are abundant in all kinds of complaints I made. My mother would ask me why I couldn’t have even the slightest feeling of gratitude. She told me how fortunate I was to be born into wealth since she always boasted our family’s fortune. I was never convinced because if we had been that wealthy, we would have lived a better life in which I didn’t need to complain so much. Mostly I complained about meals, but I did about other things as well. Among them was about clothes. I was ten years old when I began to get fat. I’m short now, but I was quite tall for a ten-year-old girl back then. My mother stopped shopping children’s apparel for me and put her used clothes on me instead because I was big. I went to school every day with her clothes on that were mainly brown and mean boys called me a cockroach. I insisted to my mother that colorful clothes for adults existed and pestered her to get them, which was rejected. I frequently criticized my parents’ way of working, too. They always tried to curry favor with my grandparents who lived in the same house and were so stingy. My family used to farm and my parents worked so hard on the fields from dawn to night. And they told me we were wealthy. It was obvious they worked crazily not to earn money but to impress my grandparents. I repeatedly explained to my parents that what they were doing was completely pointless and demanded to come home early, which was rejected too. I regularly appealed for a raise of my monthly allowance. I was so persistent in this particular request because it was scanty despite my mother’s claim of our wealth. I never stopped after I was rejected for a million times. By the time I was a teenager, when I started casually “Mom,” my mother would cut me right away saying, “About money, isn’t it? No!” She told me that she would have a nervous breakdown if she heard more of my ‘Mom’. Thus, I spent my childhood as an extremely unsatisfied child. I think I’m greedy by nature. But I believe that greed can make people progress. Resignation is considered as virtue in Japan and greed is loathed excessively. In my opinion, we need greed to make changes for better. There was a line in a US TV show, “Happiness is to be content with what you have.” I think wanting more can be happier with efforts and hope. I often feel sick and have a stomachache after having too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet. As the communal spa is free in my apartment, I take it too long every day, which sometimes puts me in bad shape and lays me up. But it’s more fun and livelier than doing things acceptably. Besides, I can’t stop it because this is who I am. Being greedy is one thing, but getting what I want is a different matter. While I find more and more things I want, they are usually out of my reach. I have to face disappointment all the time that I can’t possibly possess what I want. Even so, my greed is too strong to accept reality…