Ichi-go, Ichi-e: No Moment Ever Repeats

A note to young leaders.

Last week, my daughter and I attended a traditional tea ceremony in Kyoto – where I learned, among other things, that I am no longer the right shape for sitting on a floor.

My daughter folded herself onto the tatami as if she had been doing it for centuries. I came down in stages, like a deckchair being dismantled by someone who had lost the instructions. The hostess, who had clearly watched many foreigners arrive at the floor via the scenic route, laughed sweetly, which was the kindest thing she could have done.

“Ichi-go, ichi-e”, she announced, before pouring the tea. One time, one meeting.

“We are unlikely to ever meet again. And even if we do, we will not be the same people. Tomorrow, something in you will have changed. Something in me will have changed. The light will fall differently through the window. This moment will never repeat. So, drink it all in, not just the tea.”

Banal, I know. It has the suspicious ring of something you might find embroidered on a cushion. But it’s a truth all the same – and we all understand it perfectly in theory and ignore it magnificently in practice.

That is the awful beauty of time. It gives everything to us once, and once only.
Missed
I may speak to my daughter a thousand more times. But never again to this daughter, on this afternoon, at this age, with this light in her eyes.

My knees, for the record, have not forgiven me. They regard the whole tea ceremony as an avoidable diplomatic incident.

But I was there, and so was my daughter, and so was the tea, and none of us will be again.