Días Perfectos

Wouldn’t it be perfect if human bodies had a factory reset switch? Turn it and marvel as unwanted pounds, products of our perennial season of over-indulgence, disappear. Hit it again and digital addiction never existed. I discovered a reasonable facsimile of that switch exists in all of us. Here’s what happened.            

While fighting cabina fever during Costa Rica’s prolonged rainy season, I over-did it on eating foods laced with too much sodium. So in the interest of looking after my hypertension, I resolved to recalibrate what I put in my mouth in 2025. 

It isn’t rocket science to know that mindlessly indulging in heaping bowls of sopa Atzeca (an incredibly delicious, but very salty, tortilla soup with avocado and chicken) is neither healthy nor sustainable. Nor can I continue to gorge on tasty Italian food, a particular hardship in San Vito. It’s a town founded by Italian settlers and boasts more authentic pizza restaurants than my neighbourhood back in North Van.  

More constructively, my Google search on the subject pointed to the DASH sodium diet. (For anyone under the age of 60, DASH stands for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.) Naturally, there’s an app for that. 

I downloaded it in mid-December. That was probably the worst time to start tracking meals. Is there any nutritional value in a Christmas or Chanukah dinner? And do I really want to know how much sodium is in Rodney’s breaded turkey stuffing or in a latke? Worse, was I going to let an app warn me off my own cheese kugel? I ended up in a dark, depressing, digital rabbit hole, glued to my new app. It had become an instrument of torture.

Clearly, it was also time to dust off my Digital Wellbeing app and work on my digital behavior. Even before the DASH app, my screen time had blown off the charts thanks to Trump’s re-election and Canadian politics turning into a bad telenovela where the male lead won’t depart the show.

Both apps are supposed to be for the good of my health. Yet they made me feel worse, not better. And wait, aren’t I suppose to be a digital minimalist? 

It took me a few weeks, but I managed to step back from the brink of a runaway bout of self-inflicted digital anxiety and depression. I deleted the DASH app after thankfully having my mood rescued by the December issue of The Atlantic. The magazine suggested watching the award-winning Japanese film, “Perfect Days”, directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders. They called it ‘the perfect mental reset movie.” Why didn’t I think of that myself?

For the uninitiated, “Perfect Days” is the beautifully rendered story of a humble Tokyo toilet cleaner who finds joy leading a meditative, zen life, grounded in daily rituals like watering plants, and notably, an absence of technology. There’s not much action in the film but many existential lessons. I originally stumbled upon the film last spring and watched it multiple times. I recently watched it again.

The protagonist Hirayama, played by Kōji Yakusho, is a sixty-something man leading a simple, minimalist, analogue life. Hirayama has no smart phone, doesn’t engage with the Internet, and reads real books he buys in a used bookstore. Best of all, he listens to an amazing collection of cassettes in his truck. Yakusho won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for this role, despite speaking less than a dozen lines at most. Using only his face, he brilliantly reflected inner contentment and peace.

The most instructional and humbling moments are the ways Hirayama spends the in-between moments of his life. He respectfully steps out of a toilet he’s cleaning to allow someone to use it and quietly contemplates the shadows made by trees, not firing up his phone. Eating a sandwich while sitting on a bench in a temple garden, he takes out an ancient point and shoot camera and captures pictures of the trees.   

From the moment he wakes up, and stares out his window instead of at his phone, he is grounded in the present moment, not looking beyond it. Or worrying about it.

“Next time is next time,” he tells his niece after she wants to know when she might visit her uncle again. “Now is now.” 

I’m living my own Días Perfectos in San Vito right now and not taking them for granted by worrying about a future that hasn’t arrived or I can’t control. Like Hirayama, I will try to look for meaning and joy in the moments of my own every day existence and keep a close eye on what’s real and important. 

And oh yes, I will try to skip too many salty snacks. I don’t need an app to tell me that.