*on Wim Wenders' Perfect Days & Casey Neistat's Impossible Dream* [Published on February 26, 2024.](https://jdahl.substack.com/p/showing-up) ## _Perfect Days_  I recently watched Wim Wenders' new film [_Perfect Days (2023)_](https://letterboxd.com/jdahl/film/perfect-days-2023/). A late afternoon matinee, which is a delightful way to spend time. The film matched that description. It's about a middle-aged Japanese man named Hirayama, played by the remarkable Koji Yakusho (he won Best Actor for the film at Cannes 2023), and his daily life and rhythms. The spine of most of his days is his job cleaning various public toilets in Shibuya, Tokyo. The [real project](https://tokyotoilet.jp/en/) is incredible in its own right, with each toilet designed by a different artist or architect. [This one](https://tokyotoilet.jp/en/yoyogifukamachi_mini_park/) is my favorite. It's an unhurried film about routine, paying attention, doing things well, [music (I am not listening to enough Lou Reed)](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/61jcvgXSGrrs65QAbJghI1?si=de931ad303f6461e), and _Komorebi,_ which roughly translates as "the scattered light that filters through when sunlight shines through trees." It might pair nicely with Kawauchi's [photography](https://rinkokawauchi.com/en/works/) that I mentioned in [last week’s essay on _Her_](https://jdahl.substack.com/p/her-2013-and-dreams-of-the-future)_._ It's also, despite its near-complete lack of modern technology, a bit like _Her_ in its beauty, tempo, and loneliness. There are many lessons to learn from Hirayama, even if his life is far more lonely (and has far more toilet cleaning) than I would prefer. His presence is particularly admirable. There's an iconic scene in the film that leads to two characters reciting back and forth, _"next time is next time; now is now"_. ## Discipline Another lesson comes from his routine and discipline. He shows up, again and again, in myriad little ways. He does so with pride and rigor that hasn't lost its focus despite the repetition of acts we can only assume have filled thousands of days. I am not a particularly disciplined person and I've spent much of my life actively avoiding routines, long-term commitments, and _hard_ things. That includes physical things. While I've been moderately active throughout most phases of my life, that meant rotating through different sports throughout my youth and avoiding weight lifting or more extreme activity in recent years. In contrast, my Dad is the most active person I know. He has always had a routine around moving his body, whether that be cycling, downhill mountain biking, skiing, strength training, mobility training, or otherwise. I don't think he would relate to those things as necessarily _hard,_ in the sense that they're not hard for him to do. But he has gotten his ass kicked plenty of times (I remember when he came home from a mountain bike accident that included him flying head-on into a cactus... I still shudder when I think about it). He was ski racing until a couple of years ago. The key, I think, is that he loves to get back up the next morning, earlier than any human should, and get back on the proverbial horse. More than even loving it, I think he needs it. It is the process and presence of being out there. I've made some progress on the weightlifting front lately, and it's become a little easier over time. It can occasionally feel good. But I still don't _like_ it. Despite all this, there is one habit I've found myself returning to in my adult years, even without much discipline driving me: running. ## Running and Striving It's funny, I've run more consistently than almost anything else in my life, at least since college. Make no mistake: I don't run _that_ consistently. But most weeks, I get out there in some shape or form. For whatever reason, it's the one physical thing--one that most people put in the _hard_ bucket--that seems to come somewhat naturally to me. The past few months I've been struggling with some knee issues, and my running has been particularly sparse. It sucks: it's such an obvious example of taking something for granted. There's something about the simplicity of running: the stillness in motion, the rhythm, the inertia. Even so, my relationship with running has never been something I've pushed. I have treated it more like meditation or walking: something to experience rather than something to accomplish. Put another way, my approach to running has been almost entirely non-committal. I enjoyed Casey Neistat's latest video, [Sisyphus and the Impossible Dream](https://youtu.be/9IiTdSnmS7E?si=QRzp3GUiA6ITKogS). Aside from causing [my first tears while wearing the Vision Pro](https://x.com/jacksondahl/status/1756717038926549207?s=20), the video is an amazing look at what happens when you apply commitment to running. It's the story of Casey's near-twenty-year chase of the elusive sub-three-hour marathon. It began with an accident and a doctor telling him he might never run again. He has run 20+ marathons since, chasing sub-three. I've talked about trying to run a marathon one day, and I spontaneously ran a half once with a friend. But I've never even run in a real race. On some level, I think I'm afraid to turn running into an area of life where I have to push myself. It can be good to have hobbies that are not about growth. If anything, that's probably what I've struggled most with in meditation: not focusing on improvement. For some, maybe running or playing an instrument can simply be an escape from daily chaos. I'm glad to know that running can be that for me, but watching Casey's video made me realize that I might have more in me. [John Gardner](https://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html) wrote some of my favorite words on the subject of striving for more: > "There's something I know about you that you may or may not know about yourself. You have within you more resources of energy than have ever been tapped, more talent than has ever been exploited, more strength than has ever been tested, more to give than you have ever given. > > You know about some of the gifts that you have left undeveloped. Would you believe that you have gifts and possibilities you don't even know about? It's true. We are just beginning to recognize how even those who have had every advantage and opportunity unconsciously put a ceiling on their own growth, underestimate their potentialities or hide from the risk that growth involves." Maybe 2024's New York Marathon is waiting for me. I'm starting with repairing these knees. ## Boulders and Hills Goals and commitments to them are unbelievably powerful, especially when they make us challenge our beliefs of what is possible. I won't spoil Casey's video, but regardless of whether he broke three hours, he, Hirayama, and Blair Dahl have something in common. They show up, again, and again, and again. Today, and today, and today. I think, as great as P.R's, successes, and mountaintops feel, the true delight must be in pushing the rock, right here, in this moment.