Caroline Ishii. Photo by Paul Jones.

As I transition to a blog to reach a wider audience, I fell upon a blogging challenge, and loving challenges that keep on me track, here I go or grow as I often say. I will share my challenge with you, because that’s part of the exercise, and because I love sharing things that excite me. Here’s the challenge. http://goinswriter.com/confident-pro/#disqus_thread

March 14, 2016 (sorry, I started the original blog in Japan and I can't change the publishing date and time from Japan Standard Time. It is really March 14 in my time zone and world! See why I need help with my blog?!)

Assignment: Write a manifesto: a 500-word treatise on what you’re about. Then publish it.

As I understand it from what Jeff wrote, it’s a worldview, what gets under my skin, what wrecks me. The "why" is more important than the "what". It’s a short document that tells the world what matters to me and creates movement. Even if you don’t publish, perhaps you’ll want to do this one day, or now. Here goes!

Manifesto starts:

Love… My view is that one of the most important things to living is love, and not only the romantic kind, but all forms of love. For me that form is food, it always has been, from the first time my mother put chopsticks in my hand as a baby so that I could start feeding myself. And being the determined and smart child I was, I did exactly that, and haven’t stopped.

Respect and Equality… What gets under my skin is when I am not treated with respect and equality, and when others are not treated in this way too. I believe we are all equal inside, it’s our outside shells that differ, but seems to make such a difference. What if the only thing we could see of another was their inside and not their outside, no matter how beautiful and attractive, or ugly and repulsive they are? What kind of world would we have? 

Racism and Prejudice.. In large part, I feel strongly about this because my father was born in Canada but as a young boy he was stripped of his possessions, education and forced into a prisoner-of-war camp during WWII because he was of Japanese descent. There was a lot of prejudice and fear at that time and although he was Canadian, because of his skin colour, he became an “enemy” of the people of Canada.

If you met my father, you would think this ridiculous, because he was one of the gentlest and kindest men around, and I doubt he changed much since he was a boy because he was always youthful to his last dying days when he was 88. He enjoyed doing things for others, and he loved to make people laugh. He loved to dance! He continued to be a happy spirit despite everything he had experienced.

I experienced my own share of racism and prejudice when I was a kid, but in a much milder and more discreet way than my parents, and that’s why as a kid it was harder to recognize. Often, the words wouldn’t match what I was feeling in my bones. Even today, although I am third-generation Japanese-Canadian, people will ask me where I come from, and when I say “Canada” or “Toronto”, they will ask, “but where do you really come from?”

When I was opening my restaurant in Ottawa, we found a great spot in Chinatown that had reasonable rent and good parking but I was reluctant to put my restaurant there because people would think that I was Chinese and making Chinese food instead of gourmet fine dining vegan food with international influences.

Asians are all not the same!... For some reason, from my experience, people often think that all Asian people are Chinese, or go to this as a first response, and see nothing wrong when you tell them you are not, like it doesn’t matter that they were wrong in their assumptions and they don’t apologize.

An astute media person told me that he was happy for me that I found a location for my restaurant and it must be nice to be “with my people”. WTF? I’m sure he had all good intentions, but that struck me like a dagger and I’ve always remembered it.

Words… That’s what words do, have the power to hurt and make you sad, but also can make you happy and provide comfort. And this is one of the reasons, I’ve had a fascination with writing, books and with people. As I little kid, I loved going to the library to take out books and would read one book almost every night, and sometimes all night until I would finish it. I would get caught up in the words and the stories, like a fly in a spider web, and I would be captivated until the first last word. I haven’t changed.

Artist or Writer… When I was young, I often said I wanted to be a writer or artist, because I also loved to draw and write. But each time I pronounced this loudly to my mother, she would said a firm “no, you’ll be poor, you can’t make money doing that!”

She only had two career options for me, doctor or lawyer, and one university, the University of Toronto. And when I went to college and for public relations, she was upset and embarrassed and told her friends that I was going to UofT anyway. So, one day, when my mother was out, I ran away from home and never came back.

It was not only this incident but I had a lifetime of abuse, physical and emotional, since I was little and refused to take it any longer. When I ran away and was on my own as a teen, it was scary but one of the happiest moments of my life. For some reason, I knew I would make it, nothing would be as terrible as living in fear, pain and shame.

For the first time, I had freedom and control over my life and I have never forgotten how sweet it tasted it the first time. Sometimes when I feel I have lost freedom and control over my life, and lose my way, I remember freedom is there waiting for me, as it always has been, like a faithful dog waiting for its master to come home and take it for a walk.

With my mother long gone, it is me that takes over her role and puts up the barriers and is the harshest critic of my life and who I am. It continues to be a journey to stand in my truth and power, embracing the good that she has given me and to let go of the bad.

This is why I want to share my story and journey with others, so that if one person can be inspired to make a change, to change that light switch on from darkness to light in their life, than I am happy.

Let go!... I went around trying to find other manifestos and wondering if I wrote enough, did I do it correctly, is there more to do, and I come back to this piece that I wrote easily and for fun, and it’s over 800 words already, so I will let it go for today. I have different themes for periods of my life, like fun, truth, freedom, love, and this period I am in is called the “fuck it!” period. I am a highly responsible, gentle and kind person so it’s kind of fun for me to say this out loud when I am working too much, trying too hard, or being too nice. I am letting go, as I am doing with a lot of things and people these days that are not serving me and bringing me joy.

Are you sometimes too nice of a person like me? What can you say “fuck it” to today and smile about?