Hi everyone! It’s Pentleman (@pentleman_blog) here!
Sloth-san
Dolphin-san
Sometimes, we have to cancel to go to Disneyland with our children, and try to make up for it later.
However, don’t forget that there are values which increase continuously makes your life colorful.
– People who want to take care of their children, but can’t now
– People who want to know a Japanese famous commercial tagline which makes us reconsider our working style
I hope this essay can expand your sense of life.
Let’s find it through this short essay!
SERENA, the Car Commercial
A short, but meaningful tagline was promoted by the powerful family car, SERENA, by NISSAN in 1999.
“Memories first, then things.”
In the commercial, children were enjoying time with their parents in the onsen, the sea, and the car.
After playing in the nature as much as they could, although children were exhausted and sleeping in the car, the wonderful experiences were imprinted in their memories.
Memories that Children Have in Their Early Childhood
Experiences play a more important role than possession of things while children are growing up.
People say children can’t remember experiences in their early childhood.
However, nature adventures bring skills of good human relationships, and volunteering opportunities inspire and make them well-prepared individuals to face the future.
Overall, the more experiences a person has had in his childhood, the more established businessman he becomes in the future based on Japanese national research.
If genes are only the factor leading a kid’s future, societies would become non-diverse.
The investment of your time with your kids creates invisible value within them.
Minimalists & the Paradox of Possessions
It seems the value of experiences is given more importance in the past decades.
Minimalist is one of the related social trends from the 2010s.
“The less you want, the more you have”. People who like minimalism may understand what they really need in their life.
The paradox of possessions released by Cornell University provided three reasons why people would still find trouble having satisfaction with material possessions. These are the three reasons.
- You will get used to what you have now. The exciting things you had or experienced in the past will be usual for you.
- You will expect more than what you got last time. You will want a different level of satisfaction.
- The grass is always greener on the other side. Possession often leads to comparison and essentially causes unhappiness.
Now you can clearly see one of the reasons why Japanese people don’t have a high level of well-being even if we have everything we need around us.
Products, Experience & Time Consumption
From 2000s, the inbound tourist dramatically increased and the tourism income was mostly because of the Chinese tourists.
The new word, “爆買い,Bakugai, Shopping spree” was trending during that time but gradually decreased after 2006.
Travel applications that allow tourists to experience different types of tours became popular and other tour routes or packages besides the “Golden Route”, which is Tokyo~Nagoya~Osaka, were developed.
Experiences such as wearing kimono, making sushi and local activities also became a hit tourist activity.
They valued taking their own photos better than being photographed by a professional one using a fancy camera.
Thanks to Twitter and Instagram, “Time consumption” is the hot topic.
Non-reproducibility, limitation, participation and contribution are key words for the style of spending money, which can be named “money of the hour”.
Time is already in the mental satisfaction stage that we put more importance of it than possession.
Which Do You Put Your More Value on ?
We have a simple question here.
“Does a minimalist have minimum feeling?”
My answer is definitely “No”.
This is because even if their material resources are limited, they could be richer in life experiences and memories.
I wonder how long we can keep value of a trophy wife, palatial residences and luxury cars in our 100-year life expectancy.
On the other hand, the time that you spend with your loved ones never degrade but rather increases its value.
The memories of challenging moments you had in raising your children would become priceless things in life.
A friend of mine said that “There is a Chinese Wall that rages of possession which you can’t go over with.” Things itself can’t bring us happiness.
In your last moments, which do you prefer? Seeing your luxury stuffs or reminiscing memories with your loved ones.
I, for one would opt for the latter.
Pentleman
Pentleman’s photo travel
@ Takayama Inari Shrine, Tsugaru, Aomori in October
