Life-changing events

Seven years ago, I lost my job suddenly. I had been working in the Miyagi Board of Education for four years as an English teachers’ adviser when my boss sat down to talk to me one day in October.

Due to changes in the educational policy (the prefecture was changing from JET ALTs to privately dispatched ALTs) from the following April my position would no longer be necessary. Thanks for all your hard work and all that.

This was a bit of a shock. When I took the job I was told that the one-year contract would be renewable indefinitely, and no-one had told me that change was coming.

I found myself with less than five months to find a full-time job in Sendai, or my family and I would be on the street.

…

Three years ago one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded hit northern Japan. 

My family was unharmed but the house we lived in was structurally damaged and my wife’s business took a big hit. 

Due to fears over the nuclear accident we found ourselves packing a car in the middle of the night, perhaps never to return. The funny thing was, I never thought about anything we’d left behind during the six weeks we were away.

…

Both of these were life-changing experiences. From the first I got an urgent sense of the importance of income diversification and having a financial cushion. From the second I got an intense awareness of how little physical possessions mean to me at the end of the day.

The key lesson is that it is dangerous to assume that things will not change unexpectedly.