Melvin Durai
Luke Coutinho, an Indian entrepreneur specialising in nutritional science and alternative medicine, recently spent five days in Japan studying health and science. In a post on X, he says that he returned home with four words that changed how he looks at life. These are the four words that impressed him: 1. YUTORI — “Leave some room in your life,” Coutinho says. “We have become obsessed with filling every single minute. Meetings. Calls. Workouts. Podcasts. More goals. More hustle. But your body heals in stillness. Your mind thinks clearly in space. We have forgotten what it feels like to just breathe.” This is so true. Many people have schedules that are packed from dawn to dusk. Even after they’ve returned home from work, they have a list of five things to do before bedtime: (1) read for one hour; (2) do yoga for 30 minutes; (3) lift weights for 30 minutes; (4) play Call of Duty for two hours; (5) talk to wife for 5 minutes. It’s good to have moments when you do nothing at all. This is why, when I write a ‘things to do’ list, I sometimes include this important task: take a nap. 2. REI — “Respect doesn’t make you smaller,”
Coutinho says. “I watched people bow here. To welcome someone. To thank someone. To simply acknowledge another human being. The most grounded, confident people I know carry deep respect for others. It does not shrink them. It makes them bigger.” It’s easy to respect people who occupy high positions in society, but showing respect to ordinary people is important. The Japanese often show respect by bowing, but it’s a cultural thing. If I tried bowing, not only would people think I’m strange, I’d probably hurt my back. Every society has its way of showing respect, and namast is among the most respectful. So is touching the feet of elders. But please don’t touch my feet. I’m not old enough yet. 3. PIN PIN KORORI — “Don’t only live longer,” Coutinho says. “Stay capable longer. This one hit me hard. Because we chase longevity. But longevity without quality of life means nothing. The real goal is to be sharp, strong, mobile, and present for as long as possible. That is what I call Human Capacity. And you build it every single day with the small choices you make.” Staying capable as long as possible is something we’d all like, but we don’t always make the right choices. There’s some luck involved in good health, of course, but if you’re regularly smoking and drinking, you might be pushing your luck. Staying in good mental and physical shape requires constantly challenging yourself, no matter your age, no matter how many people gasp when you do a backward somersault at age 70. 4. ISOGABA MAWARE — “Sometimes the slower route gets you there faster,” Coutinho says. “We glorify urgency. Fix yourself faster. Grow faster. Heal faster. But your body does not work on urgency. It works on consistency. The slow, steady, intentional path always wins.” This is my favourite of the four words. Sometimes you want a quick fix. If your car breaks down, you don’t want to hear the mechanic say, “I’ll have it ready for you by next month. I’m pacing myself, doing a little each day.” But if you’re trying to become a good musician or writer or coder, it may take months or years. You just have to keep working at it, making progress each day. And then one day, if you’re lucky, someone will call you an overnight success.
