躾 "Shitsuke" Being strict while being kind
As I mentioned in yesterday’s essay, over the weekend the Belgrave Enclave (that’s what my family call our little commune out here in the hills east of Melbourne) participated in a course called “Enchanting Work at Home”, hosted by my friend Dr Jason Fox (whom I’ve known for many years), and featuring the work of permaculturist Cecilia Macauley. It was really inspiring, and you should see my desk right now, it’s looking pristine! Rooms all over our house are in the throes of transformation thanks to Cecilia.
The experience was well worth the time and I learned a lot about not just the design and keeping of a home, but myself.
Cecilia's work draws heavily on the principles of permaculture and of Japanese culture. My essay yesterday was inspired by a Japanese Zen wisdom Cecilia shared "The only effort should be in the maintenance of effortlessness”, which I think harbours a deep profundity.
Today, I want to talk about another concept she shared with us; ‘shitsuke'. Yeah yeah, it looks funny, but then so do half of the signs in Germany.
The older I get, the more I fall in love with linguistics. I’ve always been vaguely aware that “there’s a hundred words for ‘snow' in Inuit”, but it’s only more recently that I’ve come to truly appreciate how the nuanced meaning of those words might deeply influence how one understands the topic.
So it is with discipline in Japanese. It turns out there are many, many ways to talk about discipline in Japanese (which is not that surprising when you think about it), with wonderful distinction lurking within every variant. One of these forms of discipline is shitsuke. (You pronounce it with very little vowel sounds, in fact the first two syllables don’t need the help of your vocal chords at all. You almost whisper them. It’s like “sh-ts-keh”.)
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Shitsuke has a meaning resembling “discipline without punishment, as one would give a small child or pet”.
Shitsuke is the word I’ve been looking for to give a label to the removal of all the harsh, negative elements and connotations of discipline that I think are inherently unhelpful (for people like me anyway—some people thrive under vicious conditions, but I suspect such characters are relatively few).
I think we’ve all practiced shitsuke at moments in our lives, when parenting our children, or training a new puppy. I think we understand implicitly how to be at once strict and compassionate. I’m reminded of educational expert Adam Voigt’s philosophy that great teachers are fundamentally “firm, but fair”. I think he’s giving voice to shitsuke in English, because English doesn’t have a word that adequately captures the essence of the idea. Another way to say it might be “strict, and kind”.
While I think we have all practiced shitsuke with others, I fear that far fewer people regularly practice shitsuke on ourselves. Can we be at once strict and compassionate when dealing with our own foibles and fallibilities? Can we hold ourselves accountable, while also treating ourselves kindly? I hope so, for the sake of our emotional wellbeing, and our future progress. Negative self-talk is rarely the path to success.
Photo by NIKITA KUVSHINOV on Unsplash