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Holding that unease, I encountered a single book:

The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm.

I was 35.

When I finished it, I couldn’t say I fully understood.

But one thing was crystal clear.

—I didn’t know how to love.

—And at the same time, I didn’t know how to receive.

From that moment, my life quietly shifted course—

away from accumulating “success,”

toward a journey of asking, What does it mean to be full?

I was always rushing.

The next appointment, the next result, the next correct answer.

I was rarely present.

I realized this on a trip to Yoronjima.

Time with nothing to do.

Days without checking the clock.

A world of waves, wind, and the weight of my body alone.

Ah—I had been living in a constant hurry.

That was when my “habits of attunement” began.

First, yoga.

By reconnecting breath and body,

I realized how detached my thinking had been from my physical self.

Around age 36, persistent back pain led me to discover

that I had scoliosis since childhood.

I began chiropractic care.

There, I learned for the first time what it meant not to “fix,”

but to align.

Then I reached for a long-held wish.

My voice.

I began singing lessons—

not to sing well, but to know my true voice.

The voice was directly connected to emotion.

What I had suppressed, held back, or left unspoken

slowly began to emerge as sound.

Next came words.

“I don’t want to end my life unable to speak English.”

I returned to English conversation after years away.

Speaking imperfectly.

Continuing even when not fully understood.

For me, this was a profound release.

I also traveled abroad alone.

I wanted to understand, in my body,

what Fromm meant by “the capacity to be alone.”

Not loneliness—but being alone.

Time without adjusting to anyone or explaining myself.

Around that time, my nieces were born.

As I spent more time with children, I noticed something.

They live neither in the future nor the past—only now.

They taught me what it truly means to live in the present.

Meditation drew me naturally.

I learned Transcendental Meditation and made it a daily habit.

Not to gain something, but to return.

Music, film, and visual art followed.

I consciously increased time spent perceiving

the invisible intentions of creators.

What I felt, I put into words.

I wrote on my blog.

I expressed.

Sensitivity dulls if unused.

Used, it always sharpens.

I also studied deep listening.

Not answering.

Not guiding.

Simply being there.

Each of these habits, one by one,

slowly but surely reorganized my way of being.

I didn’t learn because I was lacking.

I kept choosing in order to be full.

And then, at 50, I could finally think—quietly:

I am full.

Not because I achieved something.

Not because I became someone.

But because I returned to my own time and senses.

This is the foundation of my Art of Being.

Hitomi

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