ILLUMINATION Writers

Interview with Chowa Sekai

Featuring creative writers of ILLUMINATION

Purpose of the Story

In this story, I share with you an interview that I conducted with Chowa Sekai. I met Chowa on Medium, who shared deep insights via multiple stories. Chowa is a caring, supportive, motivating, and mindful writer focusing on real issues for humanity.

I enjoyed every story that Chowa submitted to ILLUMINATION.

Let’s explore Chowa’s reflections!

Tell us a bit about your background, Chowa!

The injustice of any kind touches the deepest core of empathy in me. The feeling is especially strong when it involves helpless animals. Here is my story how your early childhood can go wrong, in a way. Reader discretion is advised, drowning kittens ahead. To avoid the story, let’s skip to the next question.

When I was between the age of 4–8, I was spending my summers with my grandmother’s sister, in her farmhouse. She was raising chickens, many sheep, a male dog — Dingo, and a female cat — Kitty.

Kitty usually gave birth to one kitten twice a year, and it was always a male kitten. When a male kitten grew up and a new male kitten was born, the “old” one left, to live in the forest and became wild. I remember some of them sometimes lurking around the farmhouse, but never coming too close to humans anymore. So that was the order.

But for some reason, I knew there was something going on. So, one time when I was 6 years old I witnessed Kitty having seven kittens and I decided to be more around and more alert. One afternoon I heard kittens screaming in their tiny voices, I went outside and to my horror, I saw my grandaunt submerging the kittens in a bucket of water stirring them with a wooden stick.

I was kept away by force from saving them and taken back to the house, where I screamed and cried my eyes out. Later on I saw from the living-room window my grandaunt taking the bucket, a shovel, and going to the forest behind the house. After she had returned, I secretly went to the forest where I found a ditch and a fresh spot of digging. I opened up the grave of kittens, picked them up one by one, and started blowing my warm breath to them, on the hope of getting them back to life.

Talk about scarred for life.

Why do you write on Medium?

To share my life experience and everything my unique neural connections in my brain can bring to the global table of open source projects. I believe that open-source of everything is the best kind of future for everybody. Only by sharing our experience and learning from others can we make sense of this world and hopefully make better decisions.

What are your values as a writer?

I try to be open. Open-minded, open to new ideas, open to create even more unique neural connections and to share them with the world.

What are the top three books affected your life?

It’s really hard to choose, but here is my choice, I added also three quotes or notes from each one of them that really resonated with me.

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl — it gave me a great perspective on the meaning of life

1. Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it
2. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
3. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his/her best.

“Prisoners of Geography” by Tim Marshall — it gave me a great perspective on understanding the world powers

1. Russian gas dependency as energy in Europe: 100% — Latvia, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia; 80% — Czech, Bulgaria, Lithuania; 60% — Greece, Austria, Hungary; 50% — Germany; 13% — UK
2. USA spends more on the R&D for military than all NATO countries combined
3. We are still imprisoned in our own minds, confined by our suspicion of the “other”, and thus our primal competition for resources. There is a long way to go.

“The Age of Absurdity” by Michael Foley — it gave me a great perspective generally.

1. Stupidity, selfishness, and good health are three prerequisites of happiness, though if stupidity is lacking the others are useless.
2. Rarity may be better than variety at beating the habituation trap, and the spice of life may not be variety but having what you enjoy most at appropriate intervals.
3. About modern world’s busyness: Activity is another means that has become an end because it provides relief from anxiety, and the illusion of significance and meaning.

What are your hobbies?

Reading, walking, thinking, writing, meditative breathing, coffee, wine, nutritious food, complex systems…

How do you connect with your readers?

For now the only way to know about my readers is by their comments, and comments are always a good read.

Why did you join ILLUMINATION and how do you find it so far?

First, you sent me an invitation, and second, I am really glad I had the courage to accept it. Here’s a big thank you to Dr Mehmet Yildiz for considering me worthy of it as well as my published writings so far, which weren’t much but I guess had still some insights. I find ILLUMINATION illuminating, vibrant, and pleasantly homey.

Who are the top ten writers you follow on ILLUMINATION?

For me there are no top writers, every writer is unique in their own way. Everybody has their unique thoughts, expressing them to other writers and readers of ILLUMINATION and Medium in general, but because of our limited time it’s not possible to know all of them or their work, unfortunately.

When I joined ILLUMINATION I was following about 400+ writers and now close to 1k, so I guess I am about a hundred or two short, but I’ll catch up soon to everybody in our community.

Doctor, I am giving you my permission to insert here the list of all the 1000+ writers that ILLUMINATION has so far, because we are in this together. A huge thank you here to everybody making ILLUMINATION happen, and a warm welcome to the new members of the future of ILLUMINATION.

What are your top five stories that you want to share with your audience and why?

Four stories are not mine, but I can consider them generally very useful, last one is mine, which is a topic that I’m keen to solve for the humankind.

The story from Kevin Buddaeus because we need a better understanding how to interact with our platform

A story by Andrew Sweeny because we all need to get better at sensemaking.

A story by Joanna Henderson because we need more compassion and understanding.

A story by Michael Haupt because we need a vision.

AnD this is my recent story on ILLUMINATION.

What are the success factors for you as a writer on Medium?

Writing about your thoughts and publish them takes courage and vulnerability, not only on Medium but on any source of publication, even if these thoughts are written on a piece of paper and only one person gets to read them.

So, courage and vulnerability.

What do you recommend to the new writers on ILLUMINATION?

Read, walk (keep a notebook handy while doing so), think, write, and have courage to publish.

What are your plans as a writer?

That’s easy, to read more and to write more.

Thank you for your valuable time Chowa Sekai. I enjoy your inspiring, insightful, and engaging stories on ILLUMINATION. Your meaningful stories are full of important lessons learned for us. I look forward to reading more stories from your inspirational pen. You are a popular writer on ILLUMINATION followed by our other writers and readers. We appreciate your valuable contribution to our publication.

I want to share a takeaway point that I extracted from Chowa’s wisdom in my Medium knowledge repository from this fascinating story:

“There is no “perfect constant happiness” that a lot of people are busy looking for, trapped in their hedonic treadmill. And even if there were, we wouldn’t recognize it, because of our well-known ability to adapt to our status quo.”

If you are a writer on ILLUMINATION and would like to be interviewed, please send a request via this link with the title of “Interview Request”.

Other Interviews

You may also check other interviews I conducted with inspiring writers of ILLUMINATION recently. These stories can provide a great opportunity to know more about our creative writers and connect with them.

Timothy Key

Desiree Driesenaar

Holly Jahangiri

Dr John Rose

Ming Qian

P.G. Barnett

Jill Ebstein

Bill Abbate

Terry Mansfield

Ann K Frailey

Woei T

Charles Roast

Julia E Hubbel

Aric D Mayer

Chris Hedges

Paroma Sen

Jeff Hanlon

Besom & Bletherskite

Sherry McGuinn

Maïa Belart

Henery X (long)

Kevin Buddaeus

Invitation to writers to join ILLUMINATION

If you want to join our growing, enjoyable, and supportive publication as a writer, please leave a message via this link. We help you become a successful writer on Medium.

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You might check more interviews in the attached collection.

You can find inspiring profiles of ILLUMINATION writers from this story.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

About the Author

Thank you for subscribing to my content. I share my health and well-being stories in my publication, Euphoria. If you are new to Medium, you may join by following this link. A small part of your membership fee will not only support my writing, but your reading times can support many great writers on this platform.

I see opportunities endless for readers and writers on Medium. You can join my publications as a writer requesting access via this weblink.

In addition to self-improvement, leadership, technology, and health, I also enjoy writing about essential molecules such as lithium orotate, alpha-lipoic acid, n-acetyl-cysteine, acetyl-l-carnitine, digestive enzymes, magnesium, creatine, choline, hydrolyzed collagen, nootropics, CoQ10, NADH, TMG, pure nicotine, activated charcoal, Vitamin B12, Vitamin B1, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, and other nutrients for health and fitness.