After watching Wim Wender’s 2023 masterpiece Perfect Days on a long flight from LA back home, I sat and contemplated what my definition of a “perfect day” was. All the memorable days in my life that swirled to the top of my mind, like greedy, shiny bubbles, I realized, were days where I’d achieved something, a goal, a dream, a promise. But that’s the rub, isn’t it? Is memorable “perfect”? The memorable days, always lurking in memories like a slippery eel, conveniently jumping up to grab my mind’s attention when someone poses the question, “Tell me what a good weekend looks like to you”, or “How would you like to spend your day”. Yet never a guiding force for how I want each day of my life to look like. This makes intuitive sense. If achievements were perfection, how would one achieve perfection every single day? You can’t achieve something every single day! This is what Perfect Days challenges you to think about, and gives you a blueprint to achieve by showing the world through Hirayama’s eyes.
Who would think the daily life of a toilet cleaner would make for a deep philosophical movie? Except the movie never engages in deep philosophy, rather drives home the same point over and over again, “Next time is next time, and today is today”. On the surface, this movie can easily be construed as an ode to loneliness. A man who engages in a fixed routine with deep determination to cope with his “lonely” life and his “menial” job. However, all Hirayama is, is a man who lives in the “now”. Devoid of thoughts about destination. Results. Meeting expectations. The movie only spends the first 15 minutes establishing his daily routine, in which he seems self content, before showing how every day is marred by a new disruption, disruptions one may face quite commonly in their day to day lives. An absent colleague, a bereaving friend, an estranged sibling, a petulant teenager. Yet, he never wavers, never complains, simply goes about his routine, still managing to find joy in the little things. A beautiful canopy of leaves, a game of tic tac toe with an unknown stranger. He measures his days not by what he achieves at the end of it, but by how present he is within each moment.
What’s most profound about Hirayama’s philosophy is how it dismantles a common misconception about detachment—that it requires emotional suppression. Nothing could be further from the truth. A man who is clearly shown to not desire for material wealth nor a high status job, cries with abandon when someone close to him confronts him about his lowly job. He cries, then some more, then wakes up the next morning to a beautiful sunrise and “Feeling Good” blasting in his van with a smile. This isn’t stoicism practiced as emotional avoidance, as popular stoic philosophy would have you believe is the best solution to confront such inadequacies; it’s acceptance that comes from fully embracing one’s emotions, and one’s present situation.
Hirayama teaches us that true detachment isn’t about becoming numb to life’s pain or joy—it’s about experiencing all emotions with authenticity while releasing the grip they might otherwise have on our peace. His tears aren’t signs of failure in his philosophy but evidence of its depth. He doesn’t detach from feeling; he detaches from the stories we typically attach to those feelings—stories about success, failure, status, or how life “should” be. And thus, perhaps, the most important lesson of all: that presence requires not the absence of emotion, but its complete and honest embrace.
I wondered, then, why does detachment from outcomes come so easily to Hirayama? The movie never explores his past too much, the circumstances that led him to become a contented toilet cleaner. Perhaps this was intentional by the director, in a movie that emphasizes living in the present, to never analyze the past and how that affects the present, a very Markovian approach to story writing! The question still remains, how can one take inspiration from the movie to be inspired to live in the now, rather than the next time.
I believe it comes from how everything about the world mesmerizes Hirayama. The way sunlight filters through leaves becomes worthy of capturing on film. The ritual of caring for his plants—each leaf touched, each stem straightened—is performed with the attentiveness most of us reserve for once-in-a-lifetime events. His cassette collection, played in deliberate sequence, turns his daily commute into a concert. Even cleaning public toilets becomes an act of artistry in his hands. Mesmerized by the preset his senses present to him, not entangled in dreams of the future or pondering on the mistakes of the past.
This constant state of wonder is Hirayama’s secret. He hasn’t lowered his standards for what constitutes a meaningful experience—he’s elevated his perception of the ordinary. While the rest of us are waiting for life to begin at the next promotion, the next relationship, or the next vacation, Hirayama has discovered that life is happening in full force right now, in the steam rising from morning coffee and the pages of a well-worn book.
Living detached from outcomes is embracing life as a Markov chain—each moment dependent only on the present state, not the long history that preceded it. Hirayama’s wisdom lies in treating each day as a fresh probability, carrying forward only what serves the now, letting tears fall when they must, or laughter erupt where it must, but never letting yesterday’s transitions dictate tomorrow’s possibilities. In the mathematics of contentment, only the present state has voting rights on what comes next.
My only criticism for the movie would be that it does not explore how passion interplays with the philosophy of detachment. This is a theme often missed in movies like these. Hirayama’s life, while beautifully rendered in its simplicity, never quite addresses a question that I often ask myself: can one be passionately engaged with a pursuit while remaining detached from outcomes? The cultural titans who have shaped our world—the Picassos, da Vincis, and Freddie Mercurys—seem to operate from a different playbook entirely, one where ego and ambition fuel relentless innovation.
Perhaps the most interesting tension in human creativity exists in this space between zen-like detachment and ego-driven purpose. While ego pushes us to disrupt, to prove ourselves exceptional, to leave an indelible mark on the world, it often comes with the cost of suffering, competition, and burnout. We celebrate these figures precisely because their stories contain drama—the struggle, the rejection, the eventual triumph. Their legacies weren’t built on acceptance but on refusal—the refusal to accept limitations, conventions, or the status quo.
Yet there exists another path to creation, one where passion operates without the driving force of ego. Artists like John Cage, who said “When we separate music from life, we get art,” or Hayao Miyazaki, who claimed “It’s not about making a great film. It’s about the process of making it,” demonstrate that meaningful work can emerge from deep engagement without attachment to legacy or acclaim. These creators don’t seek to conquer their domains but to explore them with curiosity and joy. Their innovations come not from rejection of what exists but from complete immersion in the present moment.
I believe we overvalue disruption and undervalue presence. I often wonder if our obsession with breakthrough moments blinds us to the beauty of sustained practice. Perhaps true mastery lies not in the complete acceptance nor rejection of the present, but a deep understanding of the ongoing circumstances and how our passions shapes our present. The process, not the destination, becomes the point.
In our ego-driven culture, we’ve been conditioned to believe that passion necessitates attachment to outcomes. But what if the deepest expression of passion is found precisely when we release the need for our work to be revolutionary? What if we created not to change the world but simply because we couldn’t help but respond to it? Hirayama’s philosophy suggests that when we stop trying to make perfect days happen, we might discover they were available to us all along.