In the end of the year and looking ahead for the coming year

The winter solstice, colder than usual, has passed peacefully 3 days ago. It is the time for me to extend the Season's Greetings to friends of mine, domestic or abroad. I feel it has become a kind of mannerism torturing them to read it through. On behalf of that lengthy greeting in an e mail, I would write here how and what I look back this year at its end. In addition, my hope for the future.

First of all, I am feeling deeply grateful to my life that I could spend this year uneventfully in good health. The older I get, the more I feel that way. I could hardly say it stands to reason we could live this time of our lives in this way. I have not been a sociable guy. Getting less capable of going out easily like before, I might lose sociability even more. Maybe, I should compensate it with SNS etc from now. It is a milestone for aged to get through.

Working at the home garden and farm throughout a year was my duty. A pleasant duty. In spring, I was busy planting various kinds of vegetables at proper timing. Having cool breeze on my face standing in the mid of farm in summer, I sure felt I was living. In fall, I have harvested various sorts of basketful crops. I was cooking with them every evening. I have learned a bit of the natural farming. It tells us not to plow the soil so much and to utilize the compost made from the pulled weeds and the remnants of vegetables. I don't think it won't work for farming as an industry but is a quite ecological way of farming. I would go on farming in that method in my own way.

Leave vegetables have been rich crop this year. One of them is Chinese cabbage. It has become a material of salad today.

The other dish featuring it was mapo seasoned with Chinese hot spices.

Asking myself if this has been my Beruf, I still enjoy preparing dinner almost every day. 

Getting older, I find it is becoming difficult for me to learn things from books. I still try to learn something new in the field of sociopolitics, economy, history or music. It was a real epoch for me to have learned on Anthropocene, a geological concept to describe the new era resulted from the excessive consumption of fossil fuel for the past decades. As you may know, it is equivalent to the result of the global warming. The global warming is facilitating the economic disparity among countries and even in a country. It may cause unstableness in the world. I suspect the capitalism has reached a kind of plateau causing these events. A respectable researcher in economy says the lower interest rate is a sign of that plateau. If they go on pursuing further profit and growth rate, it may end in collapse as he says. The present age, as he said, is comparable to the 16th century when the interest rate hit record low and there was a drastic change in the hegemony for capitalistic exploits in the frontier in the Western world. I still feel the avid capitalism by neoliberalism in the modern world is confronting hard deadlock. A series of asset bubble and its rupture. What will come next in the world, who knows? Our country seems to go ahead other countries regarding this problem. Aging population with lowered birthrate will require demand of social security while the deficit of the government amounts astronomical high at present. I would like to study what we could do in this country if I could do little. 

At this age of 72 years, I sadly find friends and family members having health issues or difficulties in lives. My parents in law are placed in a nursing home in Shikoku, where my wife used to visit in certain interval. They went on steady downhill for now. I often regret I have done too little for them. When they need my help, I am ready to visit them. Quite a few friends of my age or older tell me on their health issues. This age is so called healthy life expectancy. I should be ready to accept such any health issue any time from now on. This February, Dr. Wakai has passed away after a long time of suffering from Juvenile Alzheimer's. At a bible class, he used to encourage me preparing for the med university entrance exam over 50 years ago. He has done a great job at JOCS, a medical university nearby and his mother school Tokyo University. He has cared for my father who developed subdural hematoma due to falling down on an icy street. It was a big loss for me to have him passed. He has been a close forerunning friend as a doctor. I might have the same kind of loss of my friends or of my family members. It is necessary for me to prepare for that. 

As for my hobbies, especially, music and ham radio, I have made a lot of posts in this blog. It is advisable for me to omit commenting about them. In short, I am at the turning point as for them. I don't know where I should go. So far as things permit me, I would go on enjoying them.

Now closing this greetings, I would wish all of you good health and happy new year to come. The situation of the pandemic, of its devastating effect on the world economy and of the posttruth era politics, make me feel liable to be negative and even pessimistic for the future. But I would still carry on with the great optimism Robert Browning used to express in his great poem "Grow Old". I appreciate you for your courtesy and friendship to me in this passing year.

Shin Onisawa