The girl who cried, wolf?

In the past, there were times, I thought I was going through a mid life crisis. I feel like I have been there, done that, when it comes to emphatically expressing how I need to run wild, give it all up once before having to really give it all up. Cried about the dropping metabolism, the grey strays and wondered about one night stands. But each time, it was a phase of outbursts, until the next important thing in life grabbed my attention.

Looking back, I think I grossly misunderstood the meaning of the words midlife and crisis. It is not a phase that comes and goes. But a continuous process that one must learn to live and thrive with. Perhaps those phases where I felt anxious were precursors, trying to give me hints regarding what I might consider important in life later on. But I was quite oblivious to those signals then.

Thinking about it now, acceptance is the strongest word that emerges from all those signals that I recieved in the past. What would the 40 year old me tell the 30 year old me from the past, I wonder? Would it perhaps be the same as what the 60 year old me from the future would tell the person that I am today?

• Learn to accept your true self without apology. 
• Learn to apologise where you believe you hurt someone's feelings. 
• Identify what gives you real pleasure. 
• Spend time visualising the person you want to be. 
• Learn to persevere for what you truly want. 
• Play fair, lose graciously, win humbly. 
• Times when you think there is no point in life, live for the many small joys that you have experienced in the past.
• Endure the difficult times, and keep moving until the next joyous moment. 
• Forgive yourself when you don't meet your own expectation. 
• Death is a shortcut to nothing. It maybe an equalizer, but being alive is the differentiator. 
• As long as you are alive, the heart is feeling, the mind is ticking, something may change. You can change. 
• Cry when you are sad.

Time paradox

 Sorry, I could not keep my promise. Part 2 of my previous post, will surface at some point I guess. But not today. Maybe not soon. Instead I will talk about more random thoughts.

What I am feeling this moment is 'longing for a transient moment to last a bit longer, knowing that it won't."

Is it the impossibility, or improbability of it that attracts me to it? I don't really know. The perceived value of transience  is quite high. Not just for me. But it is also ingrained in a country like Japan, where the fleeting cherry blossoms are absolutely revered and enjoyed by all, precisely because of the short life span of a few weeks.  

Yet, 'sakura' (cherry blossoms) may not be the perfect metaphor for my feeling. Since spring is a yearly affair, a falling sakura snowflake also is a promise for the next season. A start of a new period so to speak.

Whereas my feeling does not seem to have the hopefulness and at the same time the mundaneness of a return. Mine is an end of sort. A looking forward with a view of looking back kind of thought.

...

In other news, I have stopped posting on most social media now for a while. Guess I needed the distance. I had almost started to represent something with my thematic posts about my travel experience in Japan. But from the very start, I don't want to sell the brand that is 'Japan'. I only want to coincide, flirt with and interrogate, understand and occasionally be understood by what I believe is the intrinsic core of the country. 

...

I guess the idea of loving something you know will soon disappear can be viewed as wasteful. But I am trying to explore if it is okay to love fully, knowing the blemishes and imperfections, knowing the expiry date, and loving it for that moment. Will the future me still remember, and be able to look back fondly on such a moment?

Maybe I will talk about my struggles with the concept of permanence another time. 

But that's it from me for now.

今日はここまでです。