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Imagine this:
The year is 2027. You've abandoned everything. Your job. Your phone. Your 401k. You flew to Kyoto with nothing but a carry-on and a dream. You took a train to the mountains. Then a bus. Then you walked for three hours into the Aokigahara forest until you found it. A tiny wooden restaurant with no sign, no menu, and no wifi.
An old man stands behind the counter. He doesn't greet you. He nods. This is the shokunin (職人 - a master craftsman who dedicates his entire life to perfecting one single craft). He has been making pizza in this forest for 41 years. He has never made anything else. He does not know what a calzone is and he does not care to learn.
He begins. Every movement is kodawari (こだわり - intense pursuit of perfection no matter how small the detail). The dough has been fermenting for 72 hours. He stretches it with hands that have stretched ten million circles. He does not use a rolling pin. A rolling pin would be an insult. He places it into a wood-fired oven he built himself from stones he carried down the mountain. He lights a cigarette. The cigarette is part of the process. The ash never falls on the pizza. It wouldn't dare.
This is his ikigai (生き甲斐 - reason for being). His ikigai is pizza and nicotine in a forest where nobody can find him. He has achieved what no LinkedIn influencer ever will. He is in a permanent state of mushin (無心 - state of complete flow where the ego dissolves and only the craft remains). His cortisol does not exist. He has never heard of mogging. He has never mogged or been mogged because there is nothing in the forest to mog.
He slides the pizza across the counter. No plate. Just wood. You take one bite and understand that every pizza you've eaten before this moment was goyslop. This is kanpeki (完璧 - absolute perfection). You start crying. He lights another cigarette, crosses his arms slowly behind his back and looks out the window at the trees. He does not care that you are crying. He has seen men cry before. The pizza does this to people.
You never go back to America. You become his deshi (弟子 - apprentice). You spend 8 years learning to stretch dough. Eight years of silence. Eight years of watching. Eight years of cigarette smoke and forest rain and flour on your hands. You do not complain. Complaint would be an insult to the craft.
One morning the master steps aside from the oven. He does not say anything. He simply looks at you and nods. The same nod he gave you the day you arrived. You touch the oven for the first time. The heat meets your hands and something inside you is finally complete.
The master lights a cigarette, crosses his arms behind his back, and watches. You are fully present. You are making pizza. You are free.
Autism Capital 🧩@AutismCapital
Men only want one thing and it's to embody the spiritual state of an old Japanese man making pizzas while chain smoking cigarettes in a small restaurant in the forests of Japan.
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