ganbatte – ryota fujimoto
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A Zen monk once gave me a piece of advice I have never forgotten: “If you want to master something, do it every day, even if it is only for five minutes.”
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If you ever attend a tea ceremony in Japan, you will notice something striking: every gesture is performed with an almost unreal slowness.
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Everything is measured, precise, unchanging.
At first glance, one might think this ritual is a waste of time. […]
But that would miss the very essence of the ceremony: the pursuit of perfection through the mastery of movement.
What struck me the first time I attended a tea ceremony was how time itself seemed to stand still. Everything was calibrated down to the smallest detail, like a dance choreographed over centuries. Each movement had been repeated thousands of times, until it became a pure expression of harmony.
I asked the tea master why she took such care with gestures that seemed so simple.
She answered: “Because haste is the enemy of mastery.”
The tea ceremony is a lesson in patience and gradual refinement.
