Terrace House Values!

So I am watching an EARLIER season of “Terrace House” as I ring in the “New Year” and new year with my cat after a super delicious bowl of tensoba I managed to throw together. In this season, there is a 19-year-old kid who has no job, has no money, and uses his dad’s credit card to buy designer clothes and accessories. If it sounds bad here in the good ol’ USA, it is 1000x worse in Japanese culture! You just … don’t do it. You don’t accumulate debt. You pay in cash. You only buy what you can comfortably afford. You work hard for money. You don’t mooch off your parents as an adult (for whatever reason, room and board seems to be the exception there). But you get the general drift of things. As someone who has had chronic illness and suffered to the level of literal lack of functionality, I also find such a “healthy” “deadbeat” utterly … disturbing.

At any rate, this “kid” tries to play off the advice of other “house members” who tell him he needs to work and have the money before he buys expensive items rather than accumulate debt for his father while claiming to “work so he can pay it back later.” He does this by saying he has “different values” than the other, older “cast members” who “know better.” I don’t know if you watch Japanese TV shows at all, but they tend to feature “commentators” who comment about the previous episode at the beginning of each episode and discuss the episode after the episode has aired … and then sometimes interject in the middle. During one of these “interjections” the point is made that this 19-year-old has a crazy amount of “pride.” Another commentator makes the point that he “has no skill(s) but lots of pride.” I thought this was an interesting point; that is, that utilizing “pride” as a sort of defense mechanism for some type of character “flaw” is really a very universal one. We see it all the time here and now in “politics.” We see it here and now all over TV – these “famous” people who are simply famous for being … famous. And we are made to believe they think they are hot sh!t. My issue with that is that people who think they are amazing and God’s gift to others tend to have VERY low self-esteem and self-confidence when it comes down to it. It doesn’t matter how one feels about oneself in this “society” (at least in the “mainstream,”) it matters how one PORTRAYS himself or herself and how he or she portrays the way he or she thinks about himself or herself. Let’s take the KKKKK….”Krew.” Would anyone think plastic surgery to the degree that a 20-year-old REALLY (“objectively”) looks much older is something that reveals “inner beauty” and success and thoughts of genuine self-satisfaction if it were not shoved in our faces relentlessly that these counter-ideas are really true? HELL NO! You don’t go and blow your lips or your ass up to cartoonish proportions because it is what others think is “beautiful;” you do so for attention, you do so because you are uncomfortable with yourself and how you appear and what you think others think of you. I say this as someone who falls into that “comparison” sort of crowd. (I also suffer from TERRIBLE body dysmorphia – something you might not know and something I WILL discuss in detail very soon!).

At any rate, I just thought it was an interesting way to succinctly state something of a universal truth. That is, that those who are “lacking” something in their own minds tend to utilize a defense mechanism such as having a lot of “pride” or parading around (&c. &c. &c.) like a beauty queen in order to COVER UP the security UNDERLYING that “lack.” This is an important topic and yet another one I want to discuss in more detail at a later time – I just wanted to make note of it now since it was so clearly brought to my attention!

At any rate, it is JUST about to turn to 2020, so *fingers crossed* the world starts to heal a little bit this year. I am thinking of you all and I really do hope you all have a year filled with good health and happiness, wherever you may be in the world! Here’s to the best year yet!

❤ Always, Beth