Kuchisabishii: Lonely mouth

A tiny bit of delight in an otherwise mindless experience

A nice reminder from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. You could replace “writing” with lots of other verbs. Living. Creating. Traveling.

Hi everyone! There are some new subscribers here — welcome! It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I wish I had a good story about taking time for self-care or giving myself space to work on other creative projects. But the boring truth is, I’ve been sleepy. I have a small child who was going through a sleep regression that lasted for months and that left me too exhausted to do much of anything. On the bright side, that small child makes me laugh every single day. Like today, when he gave me a pretend popsicle, waited for me to take a pretend bite, then shrieked, “It’s poo-poo!” Anyway, I appreciate all of you for sticking around to read my little newsletter. Happy Year of the Dragon!

Kuchisabishii (Japanese)

On a Zoom call the other day, I shoved three stale Jelly Beans in my mouth that I found in a dusty bag at the bottom of the snack bin in my office. They tasted like they’d been sitting there for years.  “These are so bad,” I said to the friend on the call. She replied, “Then why are you still eating them?”

Fair question. The answer might be kuchisabishii. It’s a Japanese word that translates to “lonely mouth.” It describes the feeling of eating something, not because you’re hungry or the food tastes good, but simply for the sake of eating something. It can describe the habit of eating when bored, but it’s more about feeling the need to occupy your mouth with some kind of…activity, I guess you’d call it. “Kuchisabishii is similar to peckish in that it’s much more about the actual action, than the feeling of hunger,” one Japanese instructor told The Huffington Post. “However, kuchisabishii can also be applied to wanting to have a cigarette when stressed, for consolation.”

What I love about untranslatable words is that they bring to light a behavior, feeling, or habit that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Which then makes you more aware of that habit. It might even change the way you experience it. This is not to say I will stop eating stale candy. But kuchisabishii adds a tiny bit of delight to an otherwise mindless experience.

From the archives

How to Be Better at Worrying, The Cut: “Worry is like a liquid. It will fill the space you provide it.”

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• I wrote a humorous essay about healing crystals for Points in Case.

• Jessi Klein’s I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife and Motherhood. It made me laugh. It made me cry. A snippet I enjoyed: “Somehow, nothing ever feels lonelier than changing, even though it is the thing we are all constantly doing.”

• A fascinating interview with Ellen Langer. The clip that hooked me was about indecision: “Most people get themselves crazed with ‘should I do this or should I do that?’ The decision is based on a prediction…when you can’t predict, it doesn’t matter… Rather than waste your time over being stressed over the right decision, make the decision right.” We spend so much time and effort mulling over our decisions, even after we’ve made them — from choosing a good restaurant to picking the best daycare for our kid to going down a particular career path. What would happen if we instead used that energy to make the most of the decisions we’ve already made?

• For a work project, I researched the failed writing career of psychologist B.F. Skinner. Early in his career, he decided to give up on writing and pursue what truly interested him: the science of the human mind. Yet his professional work was still imbued with beautiful and creative writing. To me, this was a great reminder that we can put various labels on the things we do, but we still ultimately find a way to do all the things we love.

— Kristin