By Kimine Mayuzumi In Part I, I discussed why it is (even more) important to be mindful, trust the process and let go of outcomes in this unique context, especially in the neoliberal culture with the pandemics (i.e., virus and social unrest) added. Then, a question I ask here is “what are the conditions and the mindset to create (or at least try to create) within ourselves so that we could more effortlessly be mindful,…
By Kimine Mayuzumi While the whole world has slowed down, the guilty feeling of many academics hasn’t – could be quite an opposite. It is partly because even the adjustment made for the evaluation system for tenure and promotion doesn’t seem to be promising at this point. The society is quite unsettling. The gap between who can produce and who can’t has been exacerbated. The latter group would feel agitated, anxious, and scarce within themselves…
By Desiree Baolian Qin Stopping 8:30am, March 23, 2020 This morning I woke up to a thin layer of snow covering all the still gray bare branches, the lawn that’s slowly turning greener every day. The whole world has turned black and white, like a Chinese landscape painting. The whole world has stopped — no planes overhead, no cars zooming by, no trains rushing through sounding their horns carrying millions to work, to trips, to…
By Kimine Mayuzumi Fear Fear has always been an essential companion to our lives. It tries to defend us from given threats. Fear caused by a traumatic event brings us the energy stored for emergencies to the front and creates our hyperarousal state so that we can quickly deal with the event or minimize our risks. So there is nothing wrong with holding onto fear. What I learned and tried to practice in the pre-pandemic…
By Chikako Nagayama Loneliness is a name of my suffering. Until recently, I had thought loneliness is a mistake, something that I had to recover from, or a problem to solve. Where is my friend? With whom should I have dinner after a long day of work? To whom should I speak about my heartbreak with a charming but troubled colleague? I was grieving for my lost connections with friends who had left me or…
