Sukkiri: Get Rid Of Emotional Burdens, Embrace Freedom

The word we all need to know comes from Japan

A different language is a different vision of life. -F. Fellini

I’ve always had a passion for languages, I believe they’re the only way to experience the world beyond our ordinary vision. That’s why, when I decided to enroll at University, I choose language studies without thinking too much about it.

I’ve always wanted to study Japanese; it was my first choice when we had to fill up our curriculum courses. I heard people they would never pick up such a difficult language to learn, the writing seemed so difficult and the teachers were far from being nice to our senior colleagues. I didn’t listen to them.

To be honest, they were losing the chance to learn a language with so much poetry inside, that maybe it’s not for everyone to appreciate it.

That’s how my journey with this language begins, kanji after kanji, even though classes were hard as hell and teachers really demanding, I’ve never stopped digging more and more into words and a culture so different than mine.

After the first year, when I was working on a translation for my exam, I stumbled upon a word that I will always remember for its strong and delicate meaning and it helped me to start my journey towards a minimalist lifestyle: sukkiri.

Like scissors through paper sheets

When I look upon my trusty 辞書 (jisho, dictionary), it gives me this definition:

Sukkiri (すっきり): feeling refreshed, feeling fine, feeling clear-headed (onomatopeic)

The most literal translation for sukkiri is probably “refreshed”. After stepping out of a bath or shower, a Japanese person might say, “ahh, sukkiri!”. But you can also use it every time you let something go and appreciate the feeling afterwards.

It’s the perfect word to express the “cut” we make when something in our life is too heavy to carry forward. Do you hear the sound the word makes? It sounds like scissors. Picture the first part of the word “Su” as a blade moving through the sheet of paper. And then the clean-cut, “kkiri”, the parts divide and fall away from each other.

Sukkiri is what we need when we choose to stop running for a second just to appreciate the silence. It can help during an unexpected split to a relationship as well. All of us have lost important bits of our life behind toxic relationships, feeding connections that didn’t feed us.

That’s why, like a tree during fall that let his leaves fall to the ground, we sometimes have to do sukkiri as well, stopping and letting go our burdens.

We could feel the voi sometimes

Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness. ― S. Maraboli

Sometimes is painful I know that, but over time I’ve realized it was never a waste of time. I didn’t regret even once having cut away the things that made me sad or unsatisfied. At the beginning, that void is more tangible, but it’s waiting to be filled with new positive emotions.

Of course, I experienced this phase in my life and I will briefly talk about it, to make you understand better what it means to go through changes.

The year of my sukkiri was 2017: I ended my Bachelors’ degree on a hot day in July and in September, I wanted to move in a new city, away from my family for the first time. That summer I treated myself with a new piercing, a haircut and a makeover: from a length beyond the shoulders, I went back home with a pixie cut.

The feeling of freedom in that period was powerful, I felt like a new person, ready to face a new period of my life. My comfort zone was far from me and I was enjoying this period with my best friend. Despite this, I would never have thought that a month later, for various reasons I won’t write here, sukkiri would have cut off her too, my companion for 10 years. Suddenly, I found myself in a new city, with new people at home, in a new university, with a new myself in the mirror and many things left behind.

For a moment I felt the world under my feet falling, I thought I did a huge mistake but at the same time, I was aware that everything I decided to cut away it was for a reason I would understand over time.

And so it was.

A feeling from which to be born stronger than before.

Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down. ― Roy T. Bennett

I felt freer to heal from my wrong choices, to thrive without the constant anxiety of being judged by those who shouldn’t have. I won’t say that since that moment life has stopped challenging me every day. Dark periods, like changes, are part of our existence, we like it or not.

But every time I came out victorious from the umpteenth challenge, or from another negative period, I was sure I wouldn’t be able to face my problems to the best of my ability with a negative burden on me.

Cutting something away, always seems to be something painful, something that in its passage leaves an open wound that is difficult to heal. Yet sometimes, when the weather is right, touching a leaf seems enough to make it fall from its branch.

In my case, it took very little to feel like a new person, I felt stronger than before.

Sukkiri is the word that Japanese culture has allowed me to learn and appreciate at a time when I needed it.

It gave voice to my need for lightness and helped me to appreciate the snipping sound of scissors that released my soul.

Such a beautiful concept is worth being known and brought into our daily meditation.

It should go through our existence at least once in a lifetime.