Recipes for Mind and Body Happiness💞Mornings When the Grass Looks Greener on the Other Side

💞Recipes for Mind and Body Happiness

Today's Theme: "Mornings When the Grass Looks Greener on the Other Side"

Even though you didn't intend to compare,
there are mornings when someone else's view,
which you suddenly catch sight of,

looks incredibly bright.
I am lacking,
I am falling behind,
such voices

ring softly deep in your chest.
But the reason the grass looks greener on the other side is
because you
are truly wishing for growth.
Envy is
not a sign of inferiority,
but an emotion that tells you

the direction of your true feelings.
Today,
instead of a morning of comparing and blaming,
let it be a morning of comparing and realizing.
In your own garden,
the sprouts that are already there,a morning to quietly look at them again.

💞Today's Quotes

Envy is a map of desire.
Carl Jung

Someone else's success is not your failure.
Louise Hay

Comparison makes you lose sight of yourself, but it also gives you awareness.
Helen Keller

The feeling of wanting something becomes the power to move forward.
Albert Schweitzer

When you return to your own path, your heart becomes quiet.
Eckhart Tolle

💞Today's Morning Poem

The great tree of the morning
does not
look up at the neighboring forest.
Its roots
extend deep
into its own soil,
and the light
is received by its own branches.
Its growth rings
are not compared,
they simply stack up.
That figure
deep in the chest
speaks quietly,
that growth
is different for everyone.

💞Zen Koan: "A Question from Me to the Morning Me"

Zen Koan: "What am I feeling before I compare?"

When people see something,
they immediately start comparing.
Compared to that person,
compared to yesterday's self,
compared to an ideal image,
by comparing,
they try to confirm their position.

Zen inserts a question
just before that moment
asking, 'What am I feeling'
before I start comparing?

Before comparing,
there is no judgment yet.
There is only a sensation.
A little anticipation,
a slight anxiety,
a roughness deep in the chest,
or perhaps
a stillness without reason.

The moment you compare,
they are given names.
Good, bad,
enough, not enough.
But before they are named,
the sensation is more ambiguous
and more honest.

Zen dwells in that ambiguity.
You don't need to fix it.
You don't need to explain it.
Just
know that you are feeling it.

The 'me' before comparing
has not yet lost,
nor has it won.
It is not trying to become
anyone else.
It is simply
breathing here.

When you return to that sensation,
the urge to compare
loses some of its power.
Because you remember that
even without comparing,
you were already
a being who feels.

The 'me' who feels
before comparing—
there, there is
a quiet present
without competition.

💞 My Breakfast

My breakfast is centered around fermented foods.
Today, it's 'Ishikawa Prefecture | Fermentation that turned danger into wisdom: 'Pufferfish Ovaries Nukazuke (Rice Bran Pickles).'

From Toyama to Ishikawa,
the color of the sea softens a little.
The road toward the Noto Peninsula has a certain spaciousness, and even my feelings begin to relax.
I felt that Ishikawa is a land where culture and daily life are close to each other.

The fermented food I encountered in Ishikawa was 'Pufferfish Ovaries Nukazuke.'
The moment I heard that, I stopped in my tracks.
It is a special fermentation culture, permitted only in limited regions of Japan, where the toxic ovaries of the pufferfish are pickled in rice bran for a long period to detoxify them.

In a small village in Noto, I was shown a carefully managed rice bran bed.
There was a sense of conviction there, rather than fear.
'If you do it properly, it's fine.'
Behind those words lies generations of experience and responsibility.

The taste is surprisingly gentle.
With a solid balance of saltiness and umami, it works well as a snack for sake or as a companion to rice.
There are no elements left in the taste that make you feel danger.
What remains is only resolve and trust.

A local woman said quietly,
'If you're afraid, you can't make it.'
I felt I saw the core of Ishikawa's fermentation culture in those words.

Fermentation in Ishikawa is not a challenge, but a responsibility.
Knowing the risks of nature,
if you are going to use it anyway, you face it thoroughly.
Pufferfish Ovaries Nukazuke is the crystallization of that stance.

To women who are lost in life's choices and standing still out of fear of failure,
Ishikawa's fermentation teaches us this:
Choosing while knowing the fear
is the strongest thing you can do.

While gazing at the Noto sea, I chewed on those words.
Careful, strict, yet warm.
Ishikawa's fermentation quietly stands by the resolve of an adult woman.

💞 A Morning Word

A morning when the grass looks greener
is not a morning when you have lost sight of
your own garden.
It is a morning when your perspective has broadened.

Today,
if you feel envious,
that is
proof that
the same potential exists within you.
After comparing,
come back
to your own place.

May this morning
turn someone else's scenery
into a hint,
and become a calm beginning
where you can believe in your own growth
once again.