It is said that Japanese people can be divided into two groups: those who left to experience the world and those who stayed. Those who left the world are not often expected to come back because of evolution of who we are. Once the world opens up, you could never go back to who you were before.
So after 20+ years of living out of the country, it was a shock to come back and be immersed in Japanese culture. One of the shocking things happened on the train. As we entered into one of those famous Japanese trains, we were shocked to see how literally everyone was asleep. Even high school students and some elementary school children slept soundly on the train.
As a high school student who lived an hour train ride from my home, I vividly recall what it was like. I would leave the house at 5:30 in the morning to catch the train at 6:15 and then more than an hour ride for the train then another 30min walk to school. I would start my day at school and with afterschool activities like sports, I was home around 9pm or later. I would eat alone at the table (though my mother was around and my family watched TV in the living room), then head to bed to start all over again the next day.
I was sleep deprived constantly. There was no time to feel.
I felt like I was witnessing the same thing, only this time, I was seeing exhausted elementary school kids in the train looking like tired old adults.
I assumed it’s the famous busy Japanese culture. “hard working” they say but in reality, it is a pressure from a society that encourages appearance of busy-ness like working ants (more on that another time).
But more and more, I realize it is not just Japan. North American culture and I even notice it in French culture. It is world wide. Some kids are dragged around for parents’ need to be constantly on the move. They are tossed around between grandparents, daycare, and schools. On the weekends, the children are hardly allowed a time to be bored in the garden. They are on the go from the moment they wake up until they collapse in sleep.
What a gift it is to be bored. To stimulate experiences of imagination, stillness and wonder in nature.
But these overstimulated, tired kids are often under the impression that they must entertain others, and when they are tired, they are often irritable, defiant and generally jaded with life already.
On the contrary, kids who are encouraged for a time to just be are out and about in nature, be bored, create their own games in their minds, then be bored again, have a nap, have a conversation with parents with no-one else around, willing to connect with themselves without having to entertain anyone else. These kids know when they want or need to go to bed. They know signs of fatigue within themselves and they sleep soundly.
These kids are polite, friendly, calm, thoughtful and compassionate. They know how to connect, not entertain.
As a society, and adults who surround these kids in this generation, we must allow kids to just be. To allow time for them to get bored, to be creative, to be excited about nature’s tiniest sparkles. And sleep plays a huge role. But if we keep them entertained or entertaining, overstimulated, and exhausted, their sleep patterns become extremely poor. Because they are tired, they become confused and unsure about their feelings, which then turns them into human beings incapable of compassion, kindness or true connection and rely solely on devices or people who would entertain them.
As a parent, it is too easy and all too familiar to think what they need is structure. And yes, I believe they need a structure to be guided, not to be stimulation addicts but they need to be guided to maintain the pure, natural, authentic beings that they are, and we, adults, have forgotten to be.