Pillars and dominoes
The ups and downs of work-life balance
Every time my husband, kids, and I go back to Japan to see family, we end up spending a considerable amount of time watching kid-friendly shows on NHK, the government channel. I remember growing up in the ’90s watching a live-action program roughly translated as “With My Mother,” which has been airing since 1959. They have singalongs, storytelling, and games. I’m convinced that the 30-minute episodes are, in spite of the title, designed to make mothers feel less guilty about plopping their children in front of the TV while preparing breakfast or dinner.
After I became a mother, I came to learn of a new NHK show called PythagoraSwitch, which my children (and I) have been obsessed with for years. These episodes are usually just 10 minutes long, and always begin and end with a wordless, instrumental segment where the camera simply follows a Rube-Goldberg machine. These machines, which they change up every time, are made of standard stationary and everyday items like cellophane tape, wooden dominoes, tape measurers, paper cups, old hardcover books—things you might find in your own homes. (NHK is very protective of its material so I can’t show you any trailers or clips from the show, but here’s a very good imitation that someone made.) The sequences are always intricate and impressive, even to grown-ups, which makes this show feel less like a children’s program. I imagine that with the increasing elderly population in Japan, many seniors also tune in as part of their routine to stimulate their neurons.
A red ball pushes dominoes, pushing a lever that pushes another ball that falls into a cup. The weight of that ball prompts another lever to move, pushing another ball which pushes more dominoes, and so on, and so forth. There are few things in the world that are as satisfying as watching one of these.
Of course, when the kids and I try to make our own “Pythagoras” (as we abbreviate it), it rarely goes according to our design. But the catchy flute-led theme song is now our own soundtrack to moments when we witness any kind of causation, or when we see solid colored balls out and about, reminding us of the little red ball hero from all those sequences.
I started drafting this newsletter during the dog days of summer, and the fact that I’m revising and publishing it now (in the early fall) mirrors the point I’m about to make. Our family made it through this summer with a two-week trip to Japan, followed by many weeks of kids attending summer camps, sometimes in the same location, but mostly in separate places, sometimes in opposite ends of the city. My calendars for July and August looked insane with my attempts to cram in meetings, work events, kid pickups, birthday parties, goodbye parties, and orientations for the kids’ new schoolyears. I hardly had any time left for friends, my personal writing, let alone time to relax. All I could do was look a few hours ahead at a time, while also planning for things that would happen many months from now.
The term “work-life balance” has always bothered me, because I rarely associate my life as something I’m balancing. Rather, the image that I’ve used for over fifteen years is one that my brilliant friend Allyza Lustig came up with during college. Whenever we met up for coffee, lunch, or a study session, we would check in on each other using The Pillars.
She explained that we have multiple pillars in life: Family, Friends, Romance, Faith/Spirituality, Physical Health, Mental Health, Work, Passion. It would be rare for all pillars to stand strong and tall, but say, if four or five of them did, then we could feel like we were doing alright. (For Allyza reading this, I know I’m probably getting the categories a bit wrong, but we also recently discussed how these categories can change for someone over time. For example, one might lump Family and Friends into a pillar simply called Relationships, or Work and Passion might be the same for some people, while different for others.)
During the summer, as my kids and I watched countless minutes of PythagoraSwitch, I started to see my own pillars as dominoes falling on top of each other, and how difficult it has felt to keep even a few of my pillars standing. When we don’t have consistent childcare, I do everything I can do protect the Family pillar, and let the others fall this way and that. If I’m battling a big deadline for Work (a nonprofit) or my Passion (my novel manuscript), it’s hard to also prioritize things like healthy eating, checking in on friends, or being as patient with my kids at the end of a long day.
I have been told by others that I seem to “have it together.” I credit this entirely to my late mother and the way she prioritized her appearance, health, and hygiene, even in her most trying moments. No matter the state of my pillars, I have a compulsive routine of putting on a whole face of make-up every morning. I think my mother understood that people tend to assume a lot about your life just based on how you look, and she knew exactly how to manipulate it to her advantage. But whenever someone comments that I “seem well,” a part of me always wants to scream, It’s an illusion! I wish I could ask her whether she ever felt like screaming, too.
As I’m writing this paragraph now, it’s the end of August and the kids are back in school. I already feel a little more at ease. I can sense my pillars, the ones other than Family and Work, standing there again, waiting for me to examine them. Little by little, I’ll repair the pillars that have fallen or shrunk, knowing they’ll be knocked down again eventually. One day, maybe I can look back and see it all as a satisfying Rube-Goldberg machine, instead of the chaos it appears to be in this moment.
Join me on Thursday, Sept. 12, 6-7pm CT online via Zoom for another round of Reading Between the Lines with JAST (the Japan-America Society of Tennessee)! We’ll discuss Butter, a thrilling and deliciously written novel by Asako Yuzuki. You can purchase a copy at Parnassus with a book club discount, and it’s absolutely okay to show up without having read the book. I’ll give the necessary context, and we’ll discuss key passages together. (I’ll even recommend some butter and soy sauce brands that you can buy in America to recreate some scenes from the novel.) Register for free here!
Whether it feels like it or not, it’s the beginning of the fall season. If you’re a Nora Ephron fan like me, maybe you’re feeling the itch to send someone a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils? Anyway, I’m proud to continue the work as Director of Education at The Porch to bring you over 80 writing classes happening between now and mid-December, offered in-person and online, for writers of all genres, ages, and stages. If you’re curious about any of them, feel free to let me know—I know all of them by heart!
Thank you to my friend Brittany Ackerman for editing and featuring me for the Write Or Die Magazine newsletter! I documented a “Day in the Life” (right before our trip to Japan) which was admittedly chosen on a *particularly* hectic day.
As the South Arts’ Tennessee State Fellow for Literary Arts, my short story will appear in an upcoming anthology alongside pieces written by the other state fellows from eight other Southern states. The collection is titled What We Are Becoming, and you can pre-order a copy through Hub City Press! It will be available to the public on Sept. 17.
お疲れ様です！Hope you don’t mind me commenting completely out of the blue, but I just wanted to say I find The Pillars a super helpful concept – thanks so much for sharing 🙇🏻♂️
Also, たしかに「おかあさんといっしょ」訳せば ‘With My Mother’ だね（笑）