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Okay, so in the previous episode, we talked about that phrase,
it builds character and what that means. And sometimes those hard experiences,
difficult life experiences, we will make a good use out of it. Sometimes it just wears us out and
adds nothing to it. Have you been told certain things build character for you?
Oh, that's a great question. Let's see here. Have I been told…
Well, I don't remember a moment that the phrase has been directed at me. Maybe it will come to
me when that happens. But I'm certain that the idea of like struggling is good for you.
Yeah, that was certainly, I think it was present. Whether people are really aware
of the power that has or not, I don't know. But that was present around both my academic stuff
as well as honestly, it was definitely present in my hobby stuff as well, specifically like karate.
This idea of and in some of these cases, there are, I think, positive versions of struggle here,
but I think it permeates outwards. So the places where you might expect a type of struggle to be
beneficial, I think those for me, sort of spread out into everything else that I did for a little
while. So, you know, you get the idea that like, yes, that struggle, maybe that's good. But, you know,
there's some caveats there. How about you in your case? I mean, we don't have the possibly
Japanese equivalent translation, but has anybody ever told you? No, no. So while you were talking
about your karate, I just thought about this. It's not exactly one-to-one translation,
but there is a phrase that some people like to throw around. So I wouldn't say it's as common
as idioms, but it's, it's like, I've heard this from multiple sources is something along the line
of 若い頃の苦労は勝手でもしろ. Or like... Ah, okay. I mean, I'd have to... The direct translation
would be the hardship when you're young is like, you should do it even if you have to like pay for
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like pay money for it. Because the concept is like, because it gives it builds character for you. Like
you want hardship when you're younger. Because like, even if you have to put money towards it,
because it's that good for you, you know? That totally fits. That is, I'm going to ask you to
send me that written down. Yeah. But that is... So that's, that's kind of the kind of the phrase
I would say. Yes. It's like closest to the it builds character, but like taken to an extreme.
Because like, now you have to pay for it. But... Yep. Not even have to, you should.
You should. It's recommending you that you should put your money, you should pay your good money
to struggle. Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. But so in my own little lifetime, I think
basically, doing ballet at accidentally serious level has like, right, it's basically the entire
beat of my life, where it was telling me constantly, no pain, no gain. You know,
if you're not struggling, you're not doing it right. If it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it
right. Yeah, I know. Like, it's, it's really I have a very love-hate relationship with ballet,
if you cannot tell already. But because I really do feel grateful that I met ballet when I did,
and I'm so happy to continue it now, even well into adulthood. And ballet has brought me great
friendships in all walks of my life. So, you know, absolutely, I am very indebted in ballet
and what brought to me. But I also am painfully aware of how things like lingering body dysmorphia,
or the whole no pain, no gain mentality, right, is not always healthy, as you point out.
And, and I feel like ballet is there to blame, in my case, because since I was so young, like
way younger, to have my own moral compass whatsoever, I have been trained in an environment
where, like, yeah, if you're not, if it doesn't hurt, you're not trying hard enough. You know,
if, like, if your leg doesn't hurt from like, putting it up 180 degrees up above, you know,
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and like, well, well outside of your hip socket range, like, yeah, you're not doing it right.
And I feel like nowadays, the philosophy has changed, like more teachers are educated in
biomechanics and human anatomy, and the risk of early age overtraining to the point of, you know,
causing injuries and chronic injuries sometimes. So I think it's less of that. But in
in my time, like in the what, like, late 90s to 2000 odds, when I was like most intensely training,
that was like sort of becoming a trend, but not really.
Okay. And not yet.
Yeah, like, teachers regularly went around fast shaming, like prepubescent girls, you know,
who are still growing. And, and things like that would not fly today would not like they
would probably get cancelled in today's era. Probably. But do I respect them endlessly?
Of course. Hell yes. Like, I, I admire their dedication and how seriously they treated us,
even though we were like a bunch of seven year olds. And yeah, and perhaps too seriously. But
you know, that instilled in me the level of professionalism and expectations. And I think,
to a certain extent, that's why I have the work ethics that I do today. And I'm very grateful for
that. Because I also think that being able to work hard is a talent. It's, it's, it's not automatic.
It's like some people make it sound like, oh, you have a talented bunch. And then there's like a
hardworking bunch. And it's like, nah, being able to work hard is also a talent. You know, you don't
like not no one is born just like, oh, yeah, I can work hard.
Yeah. Um, yeah. Let me let me just agree with you for that moment. Because I think I will go
off in another direction. If I if I expand on my thoughts. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not.
This is not about Soba Asami. I'm not coming at you this time. I'm trying to work with you.
No, no, no. But I see it like now that I sort of have a bit more distance away from ballet,
at least like, you know, not in like a pre professional training level. So like, I see
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how toxic some of those training methods are, and how much I needed to unlearn a lot of the
habit that I picked up along the way, that no longer serves me or now I know that it works,
but only for a short period of time. It's not a sustainable thing to keep for a long term.
This is that actually, I mean, that that encapsulates what I would have gone into
there. Because I think your experience, as you've reflected on it, like you,
you can see the nuance between a person who is right, your teachers, your, your coaches, right,
they obviously knew what they were doing with everything that they had around them. And the
seriousness, I wouldn't even say, like, that seriousness doesn't still exist, like you can
have a seriousness. But the ways that it was being executed were just the ways that a lot of the top
people knew how, without recognizing that, as you put it, right, there are a lot of short term games,
gains, and there are a lot of long term drawbacks and things that you then have to like,
double down and go even harder in those directions in order to keep progressing, right? So it works,
it can, it can work. And it does push your limits. Those are both true facts. Right? It just also
isn't maybe the like, we can do better than that. Yeah. And find a way to push those limits. But
it's different, looks different. Yeah, I think the key is to have that like,
meta understanding of yourself, where, yeah, sometimes you want to push yourself,
even if it's hard. And sometimes you want to cut back even if you want to push yourself further,
you know, like knowing when to do that, it's really hard to do unless you have a really good
self awareness, or you have someone really close to you telling you, hey, hey, stop now, like,
chill out, cut back on your work. You're not doing this, you're not doing any good to yourself or the
you know, things you're trying to do. So yeah, I think well, why it was so dangerous as like a
seven, eight, 10 year old, me was because that's all I knew. Like I all I knew was to push myself,
right? I didn't have any other perspective. All the other girls were working just as hard as me,
if not harder. And, you know, we were all in the same pot of things. And that's all I thought was
possible. Yeah. And now that I am a little distance from it, you know, it took me a while
to actually enjoy ballet, because I never associated ballet as a fun thing. I mean,
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it started as a fun thing, and then it quickly became a hard thing. And then, and after like,
I realized, I'm not going to pursue professional, it became a fun thing again. And that was a huge
revelation for me when I realized, oh, I'm allowed to just have fun dancing. You know, and from then
it was like a lifelong thing that I wanted to keep doing the the pieces that you just described
as being important to, well, as being important to growing, right, as like a person or being able to
do difficult things in a way that is most helpful, not the best, because there's no such thing as the
best. There's, there's no best way of doing anything. Because the person differs. There is an
average, very effective way of doing things, perhaps, but you need lots of data to figure that
out. Yeah, but we don't have the computational resources to fully get to the bottom of the well.
No, I think we're we keep trying. And you can take from that some pieces. But let me let me
highlight I think your keys there, which were self-awareness and or, and I think and is appropriate
here, but self-awareness and or essentially a guiding hand, right? A mentor that can help you to,
if you don't necessarily get the self-awareness right away, can help you to check your boundaries
with whatever task or tasks you have in front of you. So in the self-awareness case, you build
that meta awareness where you start to wonder about why you're working hard or not working hard
with these particular things. And you can sort of investigate that if you have a mentor,
then you have the idea of an external person who can give you an idea of where pushing yourself
is okay. And you can develop a feeling for that. What is the range there? And both of those things
are helped by having a diverse set of experiences, like getting shifted out of the country, right?
Yeah. And I think it doesn't even have to be a mentor. Sometimes it can be a friend. Sure. Yeah.
Sometimes it could be your older or younger siblings. Yep. Like, it doesn't really matter
where that sort of external point of view comes from, as long as you have some level of trust
with that person. Right. And you actually are capable of listening to them.
Because another person, maybe my mom had been trying to help me all this time, and I just
didn't listen to her. Right. No, that's, this is why you can't just have like one or two people
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at like a young toddler's beginning of life, right? Like, we just, people don't listen.
Like, that includes, that includes both of us, right? But like, it's just, it's both because
it's really hard, because you have to hold like multiple experiences at the same time.
And like, if somebody is telling you to do a thing or giving you recommendations,
like, you could be responding in so many different ways. Like, listening is hard. Yeah. It's hard.
Yeah. It is hard. Yeah. Anyway, it builds character, though. So you should probably listen
more. It builds character. Yeah, it builds character. Everyone go and, I don't know,
try to use this on people. Go build characters. Go find a way that you appreciate building
character. Please don't tell everyone just to work harder. But you know, that's fine.
All right.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us on x at
Ego de Science. That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E. See you next time.
