The snail
March 13, 2025
Starting to grow
May 8, 2025The snail
March 13, 2025Starting to grow
May 8, 2025(April 3, 2025)
Daruma - a contemplation on falling
Daruma. An icon from my childhood. An aspiration.
A lesson I knew before and yet I am still learning.
For about nine years, until I was fourteen, I practiced Japanese-style martial arts at a dojo which became a formative second home. It was here that my relationship with Japan began. The dojo had a few Darumas. Sometimes they would be part of the tokonoma, the wall-space, alongside a calligraphy. One might have both eyes painted, others only one.
When you paint one eye, you set a goal or make a wish. When the goal is achieved or the wish has come true, then you paint the second eye. The bigger the Daruma, the bigger the goal.
I had always wanted one of my own, and when I went to Japan for an exchange year in 2019, I intended to acquire one. I was surprised to discover Daruma as a jovial character found on keychains and t-shirts. To me, a Daruma had always been something auspicious. I suppose Mt. Fuji is treated similarly: revered but also marketed as a cute smiling caricature. But that dual nature is something to ponder another time.
There was a second issue with my plan to acquire a Daruma. I had no clear goal in mind, nothing to set to the Daruma. At that point, I had so far achieved my realistic goals (including going to Japan for an exchange year). Everything else I wished for my future seemed so indefinable or far out (earn enough to support my hobbies, retire somewhere with a view of vineyards, etc.)
I didn't want to face a one-eyed Daruma with an abandoned goal or an unattainable goal, and they are not meant for frivolous objectives.
That year of study abroad, I didn't end up getting a Daruma doll. It wouldn't have fit in my luggage anyway.
There is another aspect of the Daruma doll at the core of my childhood relationship with the symbol: the inability to be knocked over.
Correctly designed, Darumas always right themselves. No matter how you push it on its side, its back, upside down on its head, it will settle upright.
Seven falls, eight rises. To get back up more times than you are knocked down.
A symbol of resilience, of perseverance.
If you combine the purpose of setting goals with the ability to get back on one's feet, you might arrive at the concept of finding success through failing. After all, most success stories are actually tales of failing over and over and over but getting up each time and trying again.
I've never been good at failing, at falling. It's an uncomfortable skill to learn. It's uncomfortable to give your heart and soul, to give countless hours, into something with no guarantees. I admit that I am a bit stingy with where I allow my passion to truly grow roots. But I'm trying to learn how to just do things, even if that means I might fail.
And I know that I improve as I do things. I've witnessed myself grow.
I'm much better at cutting my own hair than I was when I started.
I'm starting small, slowly shifting my mindsets away from perfectionism, learning to celebrate rejections because it means I sent the applications in the first place. I'm trying digital art again. I'm trying to keep myself to a schedule posting art and these pieces. So what if nothing comes of my writing. The point is that I tried and I learned.
My partner and I visited Japan recently, and I brought home my own Daruma doll. It sits on my desk now, one eye painted. Unlike five years ago, now I am ready to stare into the face of my yet unaccomplished goal. I trust that I will paint that second eye. I trust that I can pick myself up again and again.
And when I do paint that second eye, it will be a tangible marker of all the work I put in to accomplish my goal, making the achievement that much more meaningful.
