Oniisanbomber's Blog

The Wisdom of Tea

20th of April, 2025

Several years ago, I read the book “The Wisdom of Tea” by Noriko Morishita. In it, one of the characters said, “Happiness is to do the same thing every year.”

That quote has stuck with me throughout the years.

By that, she did not mean to do the same thing every day, repeating the same pattern for an entire year, every year.

She was referring to the festivals that give each and every year structure.

There are the flower viewing events in spring, the summer festival, Obon, Christmas, New Year and so on. Each of those events is repeated every year. We see family and friends during those times. It is those kinds of events that lay the foundation for a sense of community, a sense that we belong together. It is this sense of community that creates happiness.

In the West, the equivalent would perhaps be New Years, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

I had the chance to visit a cathedral recently. Religion played a huge part in creating this sense of community. Every Sunday, everyone would get together to worship. At least once a week, the entire community would come together. It was part of the glue that kept a society as one.

(Of course there are numerous problems with organized religion, but here I’m just referring to how it keeps people together.)

A few weeks ago when I visited my hometown, I found that it only resembled the town I knew decades ago. The people have left and the sense of community is gone. Even on a weekend, not many people can be seen on the street. When I was a child, couple times a year the streets would be filled with one kind of festival or another.

All of this is gone.

The young people have left for the cities, the town air lacks energy, it all feels empty.

At the same time, record high rates of loneliness in cities are reported across the developed world. When everyone moves to the cities, the sense of community doesn’t move with them. In the cities, we don’t know each other. The same festivals in the cities don’t carry the same spirit.

In the end, the towns are deserted and everyone is lonely in the city.

Perhaps when one first moves to the city, one is fascinated by all the cafes, bars, nightclubs, gyms etc—but when that excitement fades and there is no solid community, it leaves the heart empty.

We turn from doing the same thing every year to doing our own thing—alone.

—Oniisanbomber