An extraordinary feeling

For six months now when I’ve been in my room, I’ve either been sitting on the floor, lying on the floor (sleeping on a futon), or standing up. Today I brought a new item into my bedroom – a chair. What an extraordinary feeling! Here I am, sat on it, using my newly acquired desk too. Now, my horizontal gaze falls on at a different part of the wall than before: the middle bit. Suddenly the room has taken on a different perspective. I must say, it feels more like what I’ve been used to elsewhere – in British dining rooms, and classrooms. In fact, suddenly the room looks like a function around me – a space for me to sit and work, an office, to fit around my needs. Before, I had to fit around the room, and multi-function in the room, even if inconvenient. One moment I was sat on the floor eating my dinner, the next I was sleeping on that same part of the floor. However by doing so, I felt like a acquired a new perspective: I had space around me, rather than furniture; I was learning a new way of living, a Japanese way of living. And so, although today’s ‘chair-perspective’ is novel, I think I preferred the new perspective I had acquired before.

Cultural adaptation is all about trying out new ways of doing things, or new ways of thinking about things, that we might never have known existed before. It’s not only doing the choice that before we wouldn’t have naturally chosen – it’s also about doing what previously we wouldn’t have imagined ever was a choice! And sometimes, we discover that the previously unimagined is actually a better thing!