Kaizen

I've had occasion to think and experience an emotion that I haven't seen recently—anger. It was in the course of describing the way I felt myself recoiling from certain well-worn concepts recently.

I was watching the Great British Bake Off, of all things, a show I love dearly, and one of the contestants noted that she always tries to hone in on what she can improve, as in the Japanese concept of kaizen. And I had the most visceral of reactions to that well-intended, perfectly innocent comment. I felt tired and annoyed, and I realized I felt angry. In the span of a few minutes unpacking this, I came to the conclusion that kaizen, and similar pursuits of endless improvement and refinement, were the water I swam in without knowing it.

Continuous, endless improvement. Always analyzing where exactly I am and what my three next steps should be. It's admirable on the face of it, but right now, I'm butting up against that as I try to appreciate the present. I have on the one hand my meditative, introspective, creative pursuit of my intuition and authentic self, and on the other a paradigm that needs me to have one eye on the future at all times. I know, I know, how can you improve without knowing where you want to go, and how can you go somewhere without knowing how you can get there, but I'm taking the opportunity to actually observe this anger and discomfort without immediately answering what to me is the siren call of logic.