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Michael Owade

@michaelowade

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Development + Design l Agent + Attorney
Born in Tokyo 🇯🇵 Real Estate & Philosophy
THE ROMAN FORUM of @instagram
A Meditative Scroll Through Life

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In the Dark Knight, Harvey Dent played by Aaron Eckhart says to Bruce Wayne early in the film while discussing the sacrifices of being a hero and the corruption that can come with power: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

It’s a foreshadowing of Dent’s own fate and serves as a warning to Batman about the corrupting influence of prolonged struggle and the public’s fickle nature.

As Michael’s Cane’s Alfred Pennyworth so cogently put it to Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne when Wayne asked: “What would you have me do?,” when faced with a terrible decision, and Alfred’s response highlights the lonely, often thankless, nature of being Batman: “Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They’ll hate you for it, but that’s the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.”

Alfred is telling Bruce that the “right choice” isn’t always the popular or easy one. It’s about enduring the public’s hatred for the long-term good, a burden that only Batman can carry.

My Advice: DON’T LET A WIN GET TO YOUR HEAD OR A LOSS TO YOUR HEART .

Unfortunately, some people are more equal than others. taken in Miami World Center by @michaelowade

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a year ago

Please allow me to present you with my Spiritual Business Card: but make it @rollsroycecars , @ogaracoach and my Literary & Philosophical Hero: Marcus Aurelius.

In Japan, a business card is a representation of oneself. It is handed using both hands and with a slight bow and received with both hands.

The person who receives it must take the time to admire it. Typically, one should comment something complementary about the card itself.

Next comes the delicate dance of where the receiver of a card places it. Are you wearing a jacket? If so, heart pocket? Are you wearing pants? If so, front or back pocket? Left or right?

Do you have a handbag? If so, are you dropping it inside or placing it inside a compartment of that bag?

Do you have a wallet inside your bag? If so, do you remove your wallet from the bag and place the card inside?

If so, do you place it in its own compartment or with others like it?

Etc. etc. etc.

Bonus points if the next time you’re in an Hermes boutique or a Palace in Paris and you ask a Sales Associate (Hermes) or a Manger (Palace) for their card - WATCH CLOSELY HOW they hand you their card and please get back to me commenting your experience.

Past experience from memory is also highly encouraged. taken in Miami World Center by @michaelowade

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a year ago

Detachment, attachment, deep roots and transience have always been core lessons of my life.

My dilemma was: HOW do I arrive in a new country with a new language and form genuine, deep connections - which is what I love most, knowing that I’ll have to leave in a short undetermined period of time with short notice?

Oh, and what about those genuine and deep connections I made in the last continent we were living in?

What is Spirituality?

Why is it so deeply rooted in Gratitude?

All languages are connected because they are human constructs.

NB: Many Japanese people do not identify themselves as religious, but rather overwhelmingly spiritual and are mainly rooted in Shintoism and Buddhism and the practices thereof.

Now, before every meal, Japanese (日本人) say “itadakimasu” {いただきます} a term which my Japanese tutor explained as meaning the process of giving thanks for a meal that sits in front of you and every single person that has been involved in it finding itself before you: from the grains of seed being harvested, the farmers, transporters, any processing or manufacturing involved to getting it to the grocery store or market or restaurant where you partake in that meal etc. etc. etc.

How do we integrate such deep spirituality into daily life?

Well? My goal is to take いただきます and I apply it to all the elements involved (earth, air, fire, water and the fifth element that varies by tradition but is often called aether, spirit or space).

NB: These elements were historically used to explain the composition of the universe.

The not-so-glamorous side about being a nomad, especially growing up was the very same thing that makes it such an amazing experience - having to move countries every few years.

Yet, today, I am thankful for every galactic fortune and mishap, action, omission, deliberate act, inadvertence, person, place and thing that has led me to this moment in my life.

For life is counted in time. We are time-stamped the moment we are born. Second. Minute. Hour. Day. Month. Year. Age… taken in Harrods by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

A “virtuosic song collection unified by its vernacular authenticity and rhythmic dynamism that offers affecting vignettes capturing the complexity of modern [Nomadic]-American life.” @kendricklamar

“I come from a generation of home invasions
And I got daddy issues, that’s on me

Everything them four walls had taught me, made habits bury deep

That man knew a lot, but not enough to keep me past them streets

My life is a plot, twisted from directions that I can’t see

Daddy issues ball across my head, told me, “**** a foul”

I’m teary-eyed, wanna throw my hands, I won’t think out loud

A foolish pride, if I lose again, won’t go in the house

I stayed outside, laughing with my friends, they don’t know my life

Daddy issues made me learn losses, I don’t take those well

Momma said, “That boy is exhausted, “ he said, “Go **** yourself

If he give up now, that’s gon’ cost him, life’s a *****

You could be a ***** or step out the margin, “ I got up quick

I’m charging baskets and falling backwards, tryna keep balance

Oh, this the part where mental stability meets talent

Oh, this the part, he breaks my humility just for practice…

I got daddy issues, that’s on me

Looking for, “I love you,” rarely empathizing for my relief

A child that grew accustomed, jumping up when I scraped my knee

‘Cause if I cried about it, he’d surely tell me not to be weak

Daddy issues, hid my emotions, never expressed myself

Men should never show feelings, being sensitive never helped

His momma died, I asked him why he going back to work so soon?

His first reply was, “Son, that’s life, and bills got no silver spoon”

Daddy issues, **** everybody, go get your money, son

Protect yourself, trust nobody, only your momma’n’em

This made relationships seem cloudy, never attached to none

So if you took some likings around me, I might reject the love

Daddy issues kept me competitive, that’s a fact ***** 🤯🤯🤯 taken in Fisher Island by @michaelowade

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9 months ago

A Disarming Conversation: The emotionally dissonant James Bond meets International Liaison Officer, Vesper Lynd, on a train in Montenegro.

Opening line from Vesper: I’m the money.

Bond: (Takes a moment) Every penny of it.

Vesper: Places business card on table.

Bond: Vesper. Well, I do hope you gave your parents hell for that.

Vesper: Ignores his vague compliment on her style.

Bond: Ignores her detailed statement about stakes if he were to lose.

Vesper: Undertones of mockery.

Bond: Half smile, direct eye contact. “Then you’ll also know that in poker you never play your hand. You play the MAN across from you.”

Vesper: Hand still cupped over chin. “And you’re good at reading people?”

Bond: Yes, I am.

Vesper: What else can you surmise, Mr. Bond?

James: About you, Miss Lynd?

Well, your beauty is a problem.

You worry you won’t be taken seriously…

This one overcompensates by wearing slightly masculine clothing being more aggressive than her female colleagues… Superiors… mistake her insecurities for arrogance.

Vesper: All right.

By the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford, or whatever, and naturally think human beings dress like that.

But you wear it with such disdain…

My guess is you don’t come from money.

& your school friends never let you forget it.

Which means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity, and hence the chip on your shoulder.

And since your first thought about me ran to orphan. That’s what I’d say you are. 🤯🤯🤯 taken in University of Oxford by @michaelowade

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9 months ago

Historically and psychologically, many people operate under an insulated righteousness assumption: If I live rightly, something will shield me.

That shield might be social respect, divine favor, prosperity, health, family stability, or at least exemption from catastrophic injustice.

My favorite Biblical Hero is Job.

Job is placed, without explanation, into a reality where righteousness is no longer insulated.

The story begins not on Earth, but in a scene set beyond human visibility, in what the text describes as a heavenly council.

God is portrayed as presiding over a council of celestial beings.

The narrative opens by establishing Job as an exemplary human being.

The Adversary argues that Job’s righteousness depends on prosperity and asks permission to strike what Job has.

God permits tests: not to destroy Job, but to examine the roots of virtue.

The Adversary suggests that Job’s righteousness may not be genuine, but conditional.

He proposes that Job fears God only because his life is protected and prosperous.

Against Job, The Adversary promises:

Take his wealth, he will surely forsake you.

Take his family, he will surely forsake you.

Take his health, he will surely forsake you.

Wealth is gone. Children are gone. Health is gone. Social standing is gone.

Thereafter, Job mourns deeply yet nonetheless declares: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.”

Job dares to question God’s justice without abandoning God Himself.

What remains is the final possession a human being has: the right to speak truthfully about reality.

Job does not curse God. That distinction matters more than most people realize. He curses the day of his birth because existence itself has become morally incoherent.

To be born into a world where innocence can be annihilated without explanation is, to Job, an offense against meaning.

If God is real, then God must be larger than this.

That is Job’s wager.

Job understands that a theology that cannot survive reality is already dead.

Justice is not mechanical.

Creation is not tidy.

Meaning does not arise because suffering is explained, it arises because suffering is held within a reality that exceeds it. taken in MILA by @michaelowade

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9 months ago

My Favorite Biblical Hero?

It’s not Sampson (Judges Chapter 16)

A judge of Israel blessed with supernatural strength who loved Delilah.

With all his strength and Delilah by his side a relationship with whom can be seen as playful the way he taunts her by hiding the source of his great strength.

“& it came to pass, when she pressed him daily with her words, and urged him, so that his soul was vexed unto death; That he told her all his heart, and said unto her, … I shall become weak, and be like any other man. & when Delilah saw that he had told her all his heart, she sent and called for the lords of the Philistines, saying, Come up this once, for he hath shewed me all his heart. Then the lords of the Philistines came up unto her, and brought money in their hand.”

It’s not Solomon for all his wisdom. The wise King who faced impossible choices.

King Solomon’s legendary abundance is described extensively in the Bible (1 Kings 10)

It was marked by immense gold, silver, spices, livestock, and global trade, making him the richest person ever, with vast daily provisions and golden furnishings, all stemming from divine wisdom.

His wealth was manifested in Gold, Luxury, Provisions & Splendor.

It was not the legendary King Midas, ruler of Phrygia.

One of the most cautionary tales in Greek mythology, focusing on the themes of greed and foolishness.

After Midas showed hospitality to the satyr Silenus (the foster father of the god Dionysus), Dionysus offered to grant him any wish.

Midas, obsessed with wealth, wished that everything he touched would turn to gold.

The Curse: While initially joyful as he turned stones and twigs into gold, Midas soon realized his error.

He could not eat or drink because his food and water turned into hard metal the moment they touched his lips.

He even accidentally turned his own daughter into a golden statue when she came to comfort him. taken in Allison Island by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

Wealth circulates like karmic energy, but here is the Dharmic mastery: The wise do not resist the cycle. They shape it.

A great real estate agent becomes a steward of transformation — someone who guides others through the cycles of:

Where to root;

When to release;

How to rise again &

How to honor the impermanence of shelter while building lasting meaning.

Regeneration in real estate mirrors:

Birth (Samsara)

Opportunity arising from Impermanence

The creative act of aligning land with Dharma

In this view, a Developer or agent participates in the cosmic function of bringing new form out of emptiness, just as consciousness births new lifetimes.

Renewal (Karmic Rebalancing)

Renewal is the dharmic phase where imbalance is corrected, waste is removed, and the property returns to its rightful purpose.

In Buddhism:

Renewal reflects śuddhi (purification)

The clearing of past karma, both literal and symbolic

The re-alignment of a place with its Svadharma (its proper function)

Revival & The Rebirth of Meaning (Nirvāṇa Within Samsara)

Revival is the most spiritual of the three.

It is when a property not only returns to use but awakens:

When it becomes meaningful, alive, a vessel for human flourishing.

In Buddhism, this is akin to:

The mind reawakening to its natural clarity

A return to luminosity (prakāśa)

A glimpse of nirvāṇa within the world of form

A revived building is a soul that remembers itself.

That is: Beauty Restored & Purpose Re-illumined.

The Deeper Teaching: Real Estate as Samsara

Real Estate is Samsara in action:

Sites are born, decay, and are reborn

Market cycles rise and fall

People enter and leave properties like incarnations taken in The Surf Club Restaurant by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

Someone whose true skill is not force, wealth, or rank, but radical comfort in every environment he enters.

Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop (i & ii) trace the arc of Axel Foley as a wandering agent.

Axel begins in Detroit, already established as a gifted but institutionally inconvenient detective.

He travels to Beverly Hills under the guise of a vacation, assuming the role of the nomad who crosses jurisdictions, cultures, and social strata because justice itself has no fixed address.

From the moment he arrives, Axel demonstrates his defining trait: unshakable inner equilibrium.

Surveillance does not intimidate him, Wealth does not seduce him, it becomes a language he can speak fluently.

This ease is not arrogance. It is the serenity of someone unattached to appearances.

Axel can stand in a holding cell, engage fluidly with a commander to buy time for his squad, walk through Beverly Hills as if it were a neighborhood diner and cruise the streets with streetwise charisma that draws attention without effort.

He does not posture for power, power gathers around him naturally. Women notice him, allies gravitate toward him, and even adversaries underestimate him precisely because he refuses to signal insecurity.

In dharmic terms, he practices non-attachment while remaining fully engaged with the world.

The early antagonism between Axel, Rosewood & Taggart is essential to this arc.

Assigned to tail him, they initially represent rigid institutional order.

Axel’s method is always purposeful.

Through humor, improvisation, and controlled chaos, he dismantles ego & fear and gains trust.

By the end of the first film, they are no longer monitoring Axel, they are following him.

This is the nomad’s deeper function: not merely problem solving, but turning fragmented systems into a functioning community. taken in Pine Tree Drive by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

Ikigai as a Practice, Not a Philosophy:

Ikigai is often spoken of as something one finds.

The language of pursuit (to find, to chase, to discover, to optimize) belongs to daylight thinking.

It belongs to commerce, ambition, and the restless architectures of the mind.

Dawn does not arrive because it was sought. It arrives because night has completed its work.

Ikigai is not the sun.

Ikigai is the moment before the sun.

Birds do not sing yet for celebration…

In that pause, life is neither asleep nor fully awake. It is receptive.

Modern culture erroneously worships optimization.

We optimize sleep, productivity, fitness, even love.

Everything must be quantified, tracked, improved…

But optimization assumes a fixed target.

Ikigai does not offer one.

A tree does not optimize its growth. It responds to soil, light, water, and time. Its shape is an honest consequence, not a strategy.

So too with a human life aligned with ikigai. The shape of such a life may look incoherent to outsiders.

It may include pauses, losses, detours, silence. But internally, it feels continuous.

Ikigai is not found once.

It is met daily.

Every morning offers a renewed invitation: will you listen, or will you impose? Will you notice, or will you rush? Will you honor the quiet intelligence already present, or override it with noise?

This is why ikigai cannot be lost forever. Even those who abandon it feel its absence as dissonance. The body remembers what alignment felt like.

Dawn always returns.

It is not something to believe in.

It is something to practice through attention.

At some point in life, often late, sometimes unexpectedly, one realizes something quietly astonishing: that life did not demand to be solved.

It simply asked to be witnessed.

Ikigai was never ahead of you.

It was never behind you.

It was present each morning you were willing to receive the day as it was, not as you wished it to be.

This is the quiet revelation.

Not that you have a purpose.

But that you are already participating in one. taken in Hotel Eden Rome by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

As much as the body needs food, water & rest; and plants need sunlight: why does the Mind need Education but the Soul needs Love?

Why do our needs, Mind, Body & Soul differ from one person to the next?

De-nial is a River in Egypt but why is denial a stage of grief?

We all know how the body is connected to the mind, but HOW is the Mind connected to the Soul and the Soul to the Spirit?

What brings these elements closer together and what repels them apart or ruptures them significantly (or entirely?)?

Can there be a complete disconnect between the mind and the Soul or the Spirit?

Why does the rational mind entertain denial?

Do you think it’s the mind that denies a subjectively known or objective fact or is it the soul?

Why does one fight against that which we know to be a certainty? Or an inevitability?

Why would a Mind be at odds with its Soul or a soul at odds with its own mind?

What daily nourishment do you give to your mind, body and soul?

Are there ever times where you feel them to be more or less in alignment?

If so, what practices led to which? taken in Aman New York by @michaelowade

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10 months ago

A Public, Extravagant Gesture Masking a Deeply Private Motive:

In The Dark Knight (2008), Bruce Wayne deliberately buys out the entire Bolshoi Ballet performance in Gotham.

He then invites the troupe onto his Yacht, ensuring the ballet is canceled so that Rachel Dawes doesn’t attend with Harvey Dent.

This is not heroism. Not villainy, but Ego, Longing, and Control.

Batman (as a superhero) couldn’t stop that date.

Bruce Wayne could.

What do I relate more to Bruce Wayne than Clark Kent or Peter Parker?

Clark was born on Krypton and, although normal there, he is a superhero on Earth.

Peter, although Earthly losses that were devastating define his pre-Super life, was a nerdy kid who was bitten by a biohazardous spider.

Batman is the only fully Human Superhero.

& as such he could never escape the true (inner and I outer) work:

Shadow, Light, Cave, Family, Loss, Enterprise, Love, Lust, Revenge, Mentorship, Disappointment, Unaided physical self-improvement, Isolation, Death, Destruction, Poverty, Empathy, Obscene Wealth, Boardroom Antics… taken in Bolshoi Theatre Moscow by @michaelowade

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10 months ago