kini shinaide

気にしないでください。– Kini shinaide

The writer Beth Kempton once rented a room from a laid-back Japanese man.

“Kini shinaide,” he would say, meaning “don’t worry about it” – the perfect refrain for a laid-back Japanese man. Years later she realized the literal translation of this expression: “don’t turn it into energy.”

Which reminds me of my friend Michelle’s theory.

I’d been caught in the net of a story about someone who I believed had committed a series of wrongdoings against me. It was an old wound, frequently enlivened with fresh aggravations. Michelle pointed out that we possess a limited amount of creative attention. If you allow it to inveigle itself with a tricky relationship, then your imagination isn’t available for the book you might write, the trip you might plan, the dinner party you might host, or other everyday acts of creation.

As she spoke, I thought about my wrongdoer. I pictured an inky pool near my forehead … seeping like tar until it vaporized into curls of chokey black smoke – drawn away from me, no longer available for other jobs.

Kini shinaide – don’t turn it into energy. Let it go.

Dr. Patricia Carrington devoted an entire book to the technique she calls releasing. She took inspiration from the Japanese and Chinese martial arts of Aikido, Tai Chi and Karate – where one learns to yield, to lean into a force rather than push against it.

Releasing, or yielding, starts with trivial irritations that grab your attention – the traffic, a snag in your sweater, the printer with a mind of its own. Carrington asks whether you could, just for now, let go of your urgent wanting. Keep hold of your intention – to get to work, to repair the hole, to print the document – but just for now, don’t balloon the wanting into excessive energy. Releasing on small matters so that they do not command outsized consequences to your day, rehearses you to let go of larger, more toxic entanglements.

As the Greek philosopher Epictetus and wisdom teachers throughout history remind us: “you become what you give your attention to.”

Kini shinaide. Let it go.

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