Why You Should Write Haikus Every Day!
“Write daily Haiku.
Be happier and peaceful.
A Haiku a day.”
I have been writing daily haikus, and this practice has made me more grateful and happier. I want to share what I learned through this practice and how everyone should do it. Now, you might be wondering what a haiku is.
What is Haiku?
So, Haiku is a type of poem for those unfamiliar with it. It is a short Japanese poem. It consists of 3 lines and 17 syllables. The first line has 5 syllables, then the next 7 syllables and then 5 syllables again.
Traditionally, it used to be about something in the natural world. Nowadays, modern haikus can be about all sorts of things. Now, because the Haiku is such a short poem, it forces the writer to distil what they are trying to say to its barest essence.
I got to writing haikus because last year, there was a haiku writing competition for writing as many haikus as possible. I wrote a few at that time. Then forgot about it.
I only started writing them consistently quite recently. I was travelling solo on a nature trip. I was grateful for the little things in life and decided to write about them, and because a haiku is so short, it does not take much time to write, hardly 5 to 10 minutes. By writing these haikus, I felt very joyful and peaceful. It made me appreciate the finer things in life, and I decided to make it a daily habit.
These are some lessons that I learned through the habit.
Life is about the Little Things.
The first thing I have learned from writing daily haikus is that life is about the little things. The day-to-day pleasures of life are what make life enjoyable and pleasurable—small things like reading a good book, listening to a good song or eating good food. Life is not about the big stuff. Of course, big things in life also make it pleasurable, like getting a new job or buying a house. But these things don’t happen every day, and these things are one-time pleasures. By explicitly being aware of the little things in life, you are not taking them for granted and being grateful for them and being grateful makes you a happier person.
Think Deeply about Simple Things.
There were questions whose answers I had taken for granted. It taught me to look at the same thing from a different perspective. Cause most of the time in life, we live life on autopilot and don’t stop to question things or wonder about them deeply. So by doing this exercise, you are training your brain to stop and reflect. As Bertrand Russel beautifully put it, “In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
Being More Creative and Appreciating Language.
The third thing I learned is to be more creative and learn how to write a haiku. I used to be the person who did not appreciate poetry and criticised it for being logical. But now that I understand it more profoundly, I realise that you are not born or not born with creativity. It’s a mindset, a mindset of creating something new. To see things in a way that has never been seen before. Being creative has helped me find solutions to problems I otherwise would not be able to find. So, it taught me to be more creative.
So, those are some lessons I learned through my experience of writing daily haikus.
Writing daily haikus has made me happier, more grateful, more creative and a deep thinker. I will continue this habit daily. I hope you learned something that inspired you to try out haikus.
If you wish to read some of my haikus, you can read them on Instagram: @artofhaiku.
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