no 5

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Welcome. Have you accidentally looked into the sun or bright light, and then looked away, the image burned into your eyelids? That’s an afterimage.

In the last installment of Afterimage, I shared about reading mountains as a calendar, optimizing the different sets of information our body and mind record, and polyamory as a mental model for personal growth.

Here are some moments, things, sensations I’ve seen, heard, and sensed this week that stay with me and linger. I hope this postcard can connect us, from where I am, to where you are. Let’s begin.

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Connecting to: Breakups and Startups

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Call me a weirdo, but I’m really into breakups. Don’t get me wrong. Breakups are emotionally exhausting. They reinforce my stubborn beliefs around failure and my inadequacies, no matter how false, or dumb. But the most potent takeaways of a relationship come at the end for me, in the separation and breakup stages.

I realize how critical it is to lean in and get curious about what I know now, what I didn’t before, and what exactly was in the middle. I know I make better decisions and my head and heart feel better, whenever I've integrated the learning.

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Signing off while high

My current breakup is working me in interesting ways. A few things come up for me, repeatedly. First, I’m reminded different relationships can have different purposes. The purpose of a relationship might range from exploring delight, and/or deepening spiritual partnership, and/or creating partnership in work and life, and/or creating a family. The possibilities are endless. Purpose shapes the relationship itself, what’s welcome, and its boundaries. But before I can even start to think about joint purpose, I need to know my own desires and intentions.

For most people, the intense, magical cloud of sexual chemistry and limerence masquerades as signs for “happily-ever-after”, or a “happy-enough-for-now”. But what exactly are we happy with?

Most of us don’t take the time or space to ask ourselves this question. I know I’ve defined relationships at the peak of oxytocin and serotonin levels, duping me into signing off on relationship agreements I was too high to grasp.

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Defining the Relationship: The 5 Determinants

I can’t build a relationship that’s fit for purpose if A. I’ve not defined that purpose, or B. I’ve mistakenly built it mostly on chemistry. Part of my problem is, I love chemistry. I have to keep it at bay, so it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass. I do this by acknowledging it, setting it aside temporarily, and focusing on the Five Determinants to define the relationship.

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The Five Determinants are: Purpose, The Why, The Agreement, Action and Commitment, and Checking in.

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I imagined what a new couple’s guide for this conversation might look like, an important prerequisite step in defining the relationship. For as long as the relationship lasts, the cycle can be repeated to continue refining the relationship, in service of the individual and joint purpose. It also supports a kind breakup, when the Check-in and calibration to Purpose supports an ending.

What I love about these Determinants and their questions is, they can be repeated from three perspectives:

1. I reflect on it myself
2. My partner on himself
3. We reflect together on the relationship

In this way, all three perspectives are respected.

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Jumping Into: A Potential New Relationship

I had the chance to connect with a fellow writer on Zoom last Wednesday. It’s been a month since our last conversation. He logged in from Austin and told me about the highlights from his recent travels to visit startup communities in the Baltics. I shared what I’m learning from my ongoing breakup.

Sharing the post-mortem from my breakup, something clicked into place. Like a plug into a socket, the lights went on. I saw the relevance of the Five Relationship Determinants for co-founders at the beginning of the startup journey. For any founder. Including me.

I’m in an exciting conversation to start a new business with a potential cofounder. We’re falling in love with the possibility of what we can create together. There’s chemistry. I guess that’s my cue to set it aside and go directly to the Five Determinants. Having clarity of purpose. Focusing on The Why. Being specific and intentional, monitoring our commitment level, and noticing what’s happening so we can check in.

Living it, observing it, calibrating it. It’s always the same forces at work, in so many of the places life brings me.

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Felt Sense: Messages from my Body

I first learned to listen to my body and what it wants to be fed during my pregnancy. It was a raw, animal-like experience of being directed toward what my body needed on a visceral level. Over the years, I’ve learned to listen to my body and give it what it needs.

Through the process, I’ve also learned to stay curious and non-judgemental. To discern whether a craving is a withdrawal from a certain substance (sugar or stimulants like coffee, tea) – or if I’m missing a certain nutrient or supplement (iron) to the food I’m already eating.

I need to rest. The weather fluctuates between 14 degrees and 5. We say, 三寒四温: three cold days before we have four warm days. High 50s and low 40s for those of you using Fahrenheit.

Sweets is the clencher. I know I’m sick when I want it. Once the chills start to crescendo rapidly, my body wants Samahan. It’s my go-to. It kicks the chill out of my body. I never travel without it, ever since it saved me while on a ten-day silent meditation in rural Sri Lanka.

I bring my attention back to my body and I ask it, what about Samahan appeals to my body now? How is it going to help? I wait to hear from my body and taste the cinnamon (expectorant), ginger (heat generating), and the black pepper (heat, and catalyst), in anticipation. Yes, I want relief from my nasal congestion. I want to be warm. I definitely want ginger, but there was something else. I remembered earlier in the week, my body had been calling for golden milk, without the milk.

Ah, okay. Turmeric.

My body’s given me an ingredients list: turmeric, ginger, black pepper, something sweet. It feels like a dictation exercise. The teacher calls out a word. I write it down before she moves to the next word. As I scan the ingredients list in my mind’s eye, I start to see what it’s asking me to make: Jamu.

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Jamu is the generic word for elixir in Indonesian. The particular one I have in mind is Kunyit Asam, but everyone calls it jamu. I’d pick up a bottle on Saturday at the organic market, or walk over to the food stall next door to my house for a shot of jamu, roughly when I’d otherwise have coffee.

I’ve been making jamu this week. I’ve been winging it, based on what I know about the properties of the ingredients, adjusting proportions by taste and guided by the memory of my daily jamu.

I’ve refined the recipe on Thursday with the help of my friend Nita, from Bali. Food connects us in joyful ways. The recipe is here, where you can also read more about Nyuh Kuning, Nita’s neighborhood. According to village lore, the local soccer pitch is in the location where David Bowie’s helicopter used to land in the '70s.

I don’t doubt it.

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A question for you: What’s a message your body’s given you this week, and how have you responded to it? I’d love to hear.

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Your thoughts fuel mine.

Tell me what you're thinking about. Dreaming about. And what exactly you're doing about the thing you've been dreaming about.

Capture some images. Savor afterimages.

Have a great weekend.

Akiko

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Thanks for reading!

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