Today, my head is full of doubts. Why am I here? What am I doing? I always have days like this, especially in a new country where I know no one. I remember when I first arrived in France in 2020, I would walk back from the little village to my apartment in the dark of night and I would cry. I had a certain idea of how living life in France would be, and although I can look back on it now and see how enriching an experience it was… at the time it was not as I’d hoped it to be.
The same is happening with Japan. I look at my days here, and most days I am thrilled. But there are some moments where I realise that actually, I am just aimlessly trying to find ways to live a good life. I suppose that this is what we are all going through. Sometimes we get distracted with things to do, people to talk to, goals to achieve. But we have moments when we realise that these things are temporary, and when we long for something that seems more permanent.
In a way, I am grateful that I have this blog. It helps to keep things in perspective for me. I guess that’s why so many people journal. It’s a record of our lives, our lives which seem to move so fast. Writing things down helps me to check in with how changes in my life are affecting me. After all, things happen and our desires change all the time. We experience loss, we fall in love, we have something new given to us, we have something old taken away. All of these things change us, and so it is better if our direction changes with it.
When I had planned this trip to Japan, I felt that I wanted something. At first it was peace. I think that’s a big reason why a lot of people come to Japan. They know that here, people are more polite than in other countries. People are considerate of each other, to the extent that they are willing to discomfort themselves just for the public good. This is a rare quality for a large group of people. It is understandable why some people may come here to believe in human kindness again. But I don’t feel the need for this anymore. While I was in France, I found a lot of peace in my life from the most unexpected place… and I feel myself wanting to go back there for it.
But yet here I am, walking around in the hot summer sun and learning about the Japanese way of life. I did not expect to feel this way when I got here, so it feels a bit strange. It’s a good time to sit quietly alone and reposition myself. How have my desires changed? What is it that I want to do now in order to get the most out of this experience? Sometimes writing and journaling are only a good place to start… eventually you need to just put your shoes on and throw yourself into your new environment in an unexpected way. It feels as if something that I had planned has now become spontaneous. In fact, maybe there is something that Japan is spontaneously delivering to me at this very moment.
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