The more we search, the more we lose our way?
So I've come back from Japan, and it's a tremendous letdown. My parents were kind enough to visit me, but even they know now, I've grown too old, too much to see things the way they do and enjoy the sedate pace and the plebeian sights they enjoy. Even in comparison to other parents, they are insular, hiding from a society both sides know they don't belong to; and now, after so long in relative isolation, I fear they may not have any true home left for which to return. Understandably, their energy to explore and discover has diminished over the years, and now they fear the unknown and take only small, very calculated risks. It is not a fault; rather, I have moved into a different direction, and from here, we diverge.
In particular, under my parent's influence back in high school, I had wanted to take the conservative route, the sure and certain path to reasonable well-being. Now, after having kicked and fought to even go abroad, and now having come back, the sort of laser-like focus I had once brought to bear toward the future is now completely lost. Seeing people, meeting and understanding differences, had consciously and unconsciously given me the will to explore. Although it has given me a wider perspective, it also made me lose my way, become tangled in webs of friendships, possibilities, and hopes. I don't really know, though, whether I became lost as I began to look around me more deeply, or whether I had actually been lost at the beginning. I wonder whether, really, I had just deluded myself into thinking I had found my way. That really, what my body of experiences had slowly revealed to me was that I didn't know what I was doing after all.
I'm sure it must happen to everyone at some point in time. Yet, in the picture in my mind, it wasn't supposed to happen now. So many possibilities are open, yet really, the choice is overwhelming, but what's worse, no matter where I go from here, I will have to sacrifice something I had fought so hard to earn. In particular, no matter where, making friends is difficult, and eventually, some will pass into the void of oblivion, a place which is inevitably everyone's eventual resting place but is far from a deserving fate for people who, themselves, had done and sacrificed so much on my behalf.
In particular, under my parent's influence back in high school, I had wanted to take the conservative route, the sure and certain path to reasonable well-being. Now, after having kicked and fought to even go abroad, and now having come back, the sort of laser-like focus I had once brought to bear toward the future is now completely lost. Seeing people, meeting and understanding differences, had consciously and unconsciously given me the will to explore. Although it has given me a wider perspective, it also made me lose my way, become tangled in webs of friendships, possibilities, and hopes. I don't really know, though, whether I became lost as I began to look around me more deeply, or whether I had actually been lost at the beginning. I wonder whether, really, I had just deluded myself into thinking I had found my way. That really, what my body of experiences had slowly revealed to me was that I didn't know what I was doing after all.
I'm sure it must happen to everyone at some point in time. Yet, in the picture in my mind, it wasn't supposed to happen now. So many possibilities are open, yet really, the choice is overwhelming, but what's worse, no matter where I go from here, I will have to sacrifice something I had fought so hard to earn. In particular, no matter where, making friends is difficult, and eventually, some will pass into the void of oblivion, a place which is inevitably everyone's eventual resting place but is far from a deserving fate for people who, themselves, had done and sacrificed so much on my behalf.