The famous lines of a poem by Japanese poet Kenji Miyazawa, who had other great works like Night on the Galactic World, but the lines above are recognized by most Japanese speakers, kind of like "Five score and seven years ago" (the opening lines to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address). Miyazawa's line literally means not failing to the rain, and not failing to the wind, so basically, rain or shine, I'm doing it. It could be used to describe some sports like soccer and football, where the game proceeds rain or shine, but not baseball, where games do get delayed or postponed outright due to the weather conditions.
On a more metaphorical view, I suspect Miyazawa meant that no matter how difficult a challenge is, no matter how many obstacles stand in one's way, to keep battling and strive for one's goals. I also use it when I think about taking a day off work, where I took pride in getting perfect attendance for so many years during elementary and high school that I lost count. Despite the advent of "sick days" and vacation days in the workplace and employee-favorable employment laws allowing employees more leeway to take breaks and paid days off, I still think it's important to try to show up every day that you're expected to work at a job, just to show reliability and consistency of work ethic and to give a good impression to team members, co-workers, and especially the bosses. Especially if I'm being paid hourly for work, I'm definitely coming in if I have leftover hours that can be converted to money.
It's also an apt metaphor, I suspect, for the stock market, to not be disheartened by down days like today where the Dow lost more than 700 points! 700! At times it was even worse than that, down almost 1000. There are few worse feelings in life than losing money in the stock market, and recently it's been weeks of slow, slow gains making me feel good and luring one into a false sense of security and then a fierce slaughter of selling......it's really kind of unfair, really, how fast the action happens on the downside, how quickly everyone takes their money out and tries to get profit.......very volatile conditions. Luckily, the stock that I recommended MJ buy for her own portfolio last week, YUM, reported great earnings and is still hanging in there despite the rest of the market crumbling around it, which is exactly the type of stock you want to buy: those that stay strong in the face of a bad marketplace, meaning in normal conditions the stock should be ripping higher. I don't know which way the market is going now after another escalation of the trade war with China that's now devolved into a currency war as well and the US calling China a currency manipulator, but I do know that I've learned how to stay strong in the face of adversity, despite strong (head)winds and rain blowing in my face.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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