The Present

Much like most of us tend to ignore the past and push it away as if it is an anchor weighing us down, we all seem to lose touch with the here and now and forget that this is living right now, this very spot.

I don’t mean to pick on my parents, but sometimes parental guidance is the classic example of forgetting the here and now. I do not mean that they have forgotten what it’s like to be my age, or go through what I have, no I think they no clearly what it is, but they like all parents have their wisdom from these times and want you to realize that there is more to life after this. I can calmly remember many a time when either my Mom or Dad would use the phrase “You have to plan for the future”. Now I don’t want to give away too much into what would be my third piece on the future, but by planning for the future, sometimes we forget that here and now is all we really have. I know I have not quite taken my parents advice to heart, sometimes met with disaster, other times, a pleasant surprise; after all I am in Japan. What I mean by this is I see too many friends in University no matter what level focusing on fulfilling their ambition of getting to the next level. While I have no trouble with people reaching for the stars, cause lord help me I know I do. I just see some many things these people are missing out on. Now while others may argue they are not missing out on much, being that they have experienced them and found in the end that they did not lead anywhere, maybe that’s the point. To experience it so you know why it’s exists, even if it leads to nothing.

I see the present as how we should live, yes reach for your goals, but if you can’t experience life now, if you keep holding yourself back waiting for certain things to fall so that you can “start living” then you will have missed so much. Imagine if you will all the things that you have seen and done, on a whim, sometimes giving the best results, sometimes proving nothing more than a distraction from your present course. Now imagine if you were to sit at a lunch table listening to people converse about how they got there, their past, and how you kept putting off your present for a future ambition. Your current status would be “waiting for something better” but how long can you go waiting, without living. I mean there are people who are bound and determined to get where they need to be in order to fulfill what they see as their destiny; but what if you forget to look at the road your taking, how can you know your best course if you don’t explore a little. The past as I said brought us this far, it shaped us to look at the world around us as we see it, but maybe the present offers not only that view, but a completely new view, one that is only focused on the here and now, the moment that we have.

I don’t mean to take away from plans while I personally relied on goals rather than plans. I mean to say that people should focus on the world around them right now; they might get a better sense of how they need to get to where they want to, or if getting there is really what they want. Life is not about waiting for the perfect moments, it’s the combination of life’s imperfections jumbled into one bright and blurring memory. But how can you say you lived life without seeing this imperfections along the way, if all you have is a start and end, and no middle, it’s like any good piece of work, you need something to fill it out, and that is why we live, in the present, not the past or the future. We are here living now, only have one shot at this as far as I know, so make the best of it.

It does not do well to dwell in the past or examine the future, if you forget to live now.

The wind does not remember the past or look to the future, it knows only now

The Past

Life will always move forward, this day will turn into the next and so forth. I am left wondering often what does today mean, if in 5 days time I cannot recall what I ate, or exactly when I fell asleep, heck sometimes I would settle for what I packed or bought for lunch. The past we cannot change, and all too often forget about. I am truly trying to understand then why it is we have a memory. Look at a goldfish; it cannot for all we know remember more than 10 seconds at a time that is a creature that is truly living in the moment. So why is it that we can, that though I cannot recall all the specifics, which I can recall times that date back into the previous century, into a me, that when I see now I scarcely recognize my physical self. (Though I always can see me)

The journey is my most definitive answer to this question; we are living for the journey, to where life is taking us and where it is in fact we are going. I refer to the idea that life is one series of roads, paths, rivers and oceans that we all navigate through and find ourselves in. there is no real destination only the journey, but to travel even if it is to wander aimlessly, you have to come from somewhere.

We all too often tell ourselves and others to forget the past, leave it be, and move on. Why? Is the past such a scary concept that we cannot examine it except from a point of scholarly intent. Why it is that self reflection and remembrance is so hard. What are we scared to find, that we are not how we turned out to be? That the person we are now reflects poorly on who we were, or vice versa? I know there are things I wish I could change, regrets of actions, words, missed opportunities that I have wasted and will never get again. Yet, I am speaking to you from a foreign country, I have a loving family, friendships and companions that I know will travel my roads with me whenever possible. So yes some days I do not like what I see, some days I do not like where I have been. Yet I am always going on.

The past allows us to see where we are, can you honestly tell yourself you know why you are there right now, and NO I will not except the answer God said I should… faith has everything to do with this, but god does not make your feet walk nor your mind be wary of your actions you are mortal and thus are bound by mortal conditions. Anyway back to where you are. You are there because of your past, because of your belief in your actions or your regret from them, you are there to act or atone for something, you are their looking on the brink of your existence, looking back and saying is this it, or is there more. All our actions lead is somewhere, they all take us to some place. We cannot escape them; we cannot replay and reedit them. This is life it is going to keep going, you are human we are all going to make errors in judgement, but who is to say that error cannot lead you into a better day.

They say history is doomed to repeat itself unless we listen to its stories; people often look at this from the greater perspective of things like slavery, civil liberties and racism. Yes these are all very plausible things, and we must not let them cast a dark shadow on our world again. So why is it that we take ourselves out of this context, we often here, I always do this…or this keeps on happening, there is a reason, simply put history is repeating itself because you fail to read the story. You must see where you came to know where you are. If this is true you can’t move forward only circles till you see where you are.
No one is perfect and will walk in a straight path, but then the world is not perfect, the river never runs in a straight line, even canals built by man the water runs forward but from side to side moving and sliding. So do not expect your life to go forward in one moment to the next, allow yourself the pleasure of seeing the new oddities that come from the randomness of life. Yet as they come, see how they came, so that you know that if these come again to embrace them, or to quickly push past them. We can never tell what the future holds for us, but we can read what our past has given us. Use every story, ever road travelled to understand why you are there, it is not a question you can answer, but simply a look into who you are, you are complex, and very real.

You cannot escape your past, best learn to at least look back and acknowledge that it brought you here.

The wind is ageless constantly telling new stories of our yesterday

Why I Write

This is a partial reply to a post on my Facebook account about my lack of updates on the blog, now it’s not too pick on the person as I greatly respect both their own voice and their amazing sense of what being a friend is, but needless to say it gave me the fuel to write this.

Now originally I must confess that the idea of the blog was to write about my adventures here in Japan, I wrote a couple, but seeing as every day, almost everything has a story to it. It would be nearly impossible to write that much, or to get it in a sense so you can understand of how much in awe I am sometimes. Other times would best be reflected in how confused I must feel or alienated at times, this all plays in, and while I know my words often can strike chords with others, no words can suffice to how each thing impacts me, sometimes in a very raw and naked way.

So then I just turned to my writing, for any who know me, know that this is not uncommon, throughout university I was always known to carry a spare notebook that would be filled with lines of drabble sometimes sparking a great amount of effort, sometimes just a few short lines, others verse or rhyme of something that I had conjured up during an interesting or dull lecture. Now that tradition has not been lost I still carry a notebook everywhere I go, and write in it, for every entry to this blog, I have maybe 5 to the book. Yet I have made this blog different, because I did want it to be simply an extension of that notebook, but rather serious thought put into the entry, serious questions asked about myself. Now I have spoken that I’m not sure who reads this, but then again sometimes I don’t really care if you do or don’t because by just writing on the issues, I have forced myself to dig for an explanation into things I have often skimmed by.

So why do I write then? Well I think I write because what good does any of this thought do if not put out there for others, waiting to debate certain parts, see what can be amalgamated to other notions of life or what others can augment to my own current thoughts. Why? Simply put because I can, because I want to explore an issue, because an issue arises that I feel that I need to reflect and question why it came in the first place or the consequences of it. There are just as many reasons why I should as to why I could never seek to explain every daily adventure here. Yet, inspiration for these sometimes is hard to come by, either because I am still blind and naive to what it is I’m facing or, like most…I’m just not interested. Yet then again sometimes I have no explanations or thoughts because I am just finding this out, and coming to my own terms with it. I will write these pages eventually, but sometimes I just have no words to adequately interpret what goes on below my surface. Yet I think if you really know who I am as a writer then well you must also know who I can be as a thinker…at best of times a scatter brain…worst of times well…when I find the words that describes what goes on in my head…I’ll let you know.

Some weeks will be filled with entries, some with none, why…. Because always because I do not write just for the sake of it…I write because I want to seek and explain something to everyone to see it myself…that is why I write…not for you the reader (though I am greatly thankful; honestly some comments have led to deep insight) but for myself, to let my own voice but heard in the vast nether verse of space.

So be patient and entries will fill this…and perhaps upon our next true conversation I can share some of what I write outside of this box.

The winds move at their own pace, no one else’s.