Returning to the Past
"I'm afraid your longing may be chronic," the doctor said to me. A doctor is useful for a lot, but apparently not for curing the ravenous sense of longing eating away at my heart. The doctor gave me no prescriptions, no instructions, and no assurances. Almost everything is uncertain. The only sure thing is that if I am to cure myself of this longing, I'll have to do it myself.
Of course, it would be quite silly of me to go to the doctor because I was feeling a little nostalgic. And I didn't. I do wonder, though, what a doctor might be able to do for me. What solutions exist to resolve my plight? My longing brings me not infrequent bouts of despondent introspection. It seems so irrational, this feeling. To yearn so strongly when I already have so much; it's a kind of decadence that could be afforded only to the most privileged, like myself. When I put it that way, it seems laughable, but in my mind, it's really no trivial matter.
Thankfully, a sense of longing is easy to cure. I just have to acquire the thing I long for. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what it is that I want. My best guess right now is that I want to return to Japan. But the essence that motivates my desire to return to Japan is unclear. My biggest fear is that my fundamental motivation is the fact that I lived in Japan in the past. I spent the first half of my life in Japan and the second half in the United States. The country in which I live has so much to do with the past and the present. Homesickness, I can cure. Nostalgia, I don't know if I can. I can't time-travel, after all.
Occasionally I gain a faint sense that I am approaching something reminiscent of how I imagine the past was. But when I think deeply about it, when the past was the present, it really wasn't as fantastic as I conceptualize the past as having been. When I look back at my time at college, I will likely reflect upon my experience more fondly than I think about it now, as grateful as I am for the opportunity I have been afforded. It's not worth remembering the bad, but it's much harder not to think about the bad. Maybe, in that sense, the past will always be more appealing than the present. Perhaps I am longing for something that I can never obtain in the present.
Even if I am just homesick, the favorable view I have of Japan might be biased by the same process. I remember all of the great things about Japan, but not the bad stuff. When I experience the negatives, will it be so easy to brush them aside as I do in retrospect? When I return to Japan, I will get a better sense of what it is that I am missing. Either I find it, or I eliminate a possible option.
I think I can even discover it right now if I try hard enough. My leading hypothesis is merely about attitudes. Attitudes about how I think things ought to be for me, and attitudes about how I think things are. I have significant control over how I feel about my current conditions. Certainly it would be easier to reconcile the disparity between my desires and my truth if the truth were already close to my desires. If I desire to be in Japan, then my mind has little work to do if I move to Japan. I'm not in a poor condition right now, though. It is not as though I am living under destitute conditions. Maybe if I can just identify my desires being fulfilled in the world that I am living in, I've done enough to quell my longing. I'll see how it goes.
Of course, it would be quite silly of me to go to the doctor because I was feeling a little nostalgic. And I didn't. I do wonder, though, what a doctor might be able to do for me. What solutions exist to resolve my plight? My longing brings me not infrequent bouts of despondent introspection. It seems so irrational, this feeling. To yearn so strongly when I already have so much; it's a kind of decadence that could be afforded only to the most privileged, like myself. When I put it that way, it seems laughable, but in my mind, it's really no trivial matter.
Thankfully, a sense of longing is easy to cure. I just have to acquire the thing I long for. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what it is that I want. My best guess right now is that I want to return to Japan. But the essence that motivates my desire to return to Japan is unclear. My biggest fear is that my fundamental motivation is the fact that I lived in Japan in the past. I spent the first half of my life in Japan and the second half in the United States. The country in which I live has so much to do with the past and the present. Homesickness, I can cure. Nostalgia, I don't know if I can. I can't time-travel, after all.
Occasionally I gain a faint sense that I am approaching something reminiscent of how I imagine the past was. But when I think deeply about it, when the past was the present, it really wasn't as fantastic as I conceptualize the past as having been. When I look back at my time at college, I will likely reflect upon my experience more fondly than I think about it now, as grateful as I am for the opportunity I have been afforded. It's not worth remembering the bad, but it's much harder not to think about the bad. Maybe, in that sense, the past will always be more appealing than the present. Perhaps I am longing for something that I can never obtain in the present.
Even if I am just homesick, the favorable view I have of Japan might be biased by the same process. I remember all of the great things about Japan, but not the bad stuff. When I experience the negatives, will it be so easy to brush them aside as I do in retrospect? When I return to Japan, I will get a better sense of what it is that I am missing. Either I find it, or I eliminate a possible option.
I think I can even discover it right now if I try hard enough. My leading hypothesis is merely about attitudes. Attitudes about how I think things ought to be for me, and attitudes about how I think things are. I have significant control over how I feel about my current conditions. Certainly it would be easier to reconcile the disparity between my desires and my truth if the truth were already close to my desires. If I desire to be in Japan, then my mind has little work to do if I move to Japan. I'm not in a poor condition right now, though. It is not as though I am living under destitute conditions. Maybe if I can just identify my desires being fulfilled in the world that I am living in, I've done enough to quell my longing. I'll see how it goes.
would love to read/hear about your experience in Japan someday. now, i just hope you find what you're looking for in some form :)
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