Smiling on my Journey

There is a quote I have always found inspiring that reads… 

“In order to discover new lands, one must lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

It reminds us that it is difficult to truly be in a state of complete openness and discovery of what is unfolding right in front of us when we are continuously looking behind us to the shore of familiarity, of home.  It would be a matter of one’s perspective as to whether or not five months in Japan is considered a “very long time.”  From my conversations with a small handful of friends and loved ones back home, it has become clear to me that time moves at a very different pace and experience here in Kyoto than these five months have moved in the continuously busy lives of those back home.  

As I have been essentially disconnected from a formal schedule of any kind, living with only wifi connectivity when available and no phone connection, I have found myself in the world of an observer of life, both the daily lives of the people of Kyoto, and of myself.  For the first several months, I was learning to simply assimilate to a completely foreign environment, on most days a completely paradoxical and confusing way of doing things.  Yet, I always had Austin, my home, as the not too distant familiar shore in my reflection.  Much of my mental and physical energy would be preoccupied with figuring out how long I could stay in Japan, visa logistics, what life would look like when I got back, what was happening in the lives of loved ones I had left behind.

As I have become more and more intent on simply living this experience, this journey, this adventure…my days have become more immersed and absorbed in the present moment of just living life every day that I am here in Kyoto.

Today, as with so many other Fall days, I got on my bike, picked up a lunch at the nearby market, and rode to sit amidst the red, orange, and yellow leaves in Kyoto’s Imperial Garden...just to simply sit.  I watched people go by on bikes, a mother and child playing and laughing, a young woman in a kimono being photographed among the maples, wandered past a baseball game, and simply observed leaves slowly falling.

Without thinking about it, I realized I had a huge ear to ear smile on my face.  Pure happiness.  It happens to me all the time in Kyoto, whether I am lost on my bike amidst the confusing maze of narrow Japanese streets, or learning calligraphy, painting or tai chi without a word of English spoken, or just sitting on a park bench beside the Kamogawa River.  It hits me.  This is it. This is fully living.  I smile to myself.  There is nowhere else to get to.  There is no end goal to reach.  I am just living my life.

Today, I am in Kyoto, Japan on a bike.  Would I have ever thought two years ago as I was posting pictures on a vision board that said “Explore Kyoto” and “Solitude and Silence" in Japan that I would actually be here on my bike, living and exploring this

beautiful city of Kyoto. Then I am reminded....this is it.  We are each creating our own experience....every day.  Life is not happening to us, but for us.  I am grateful for this once in a lifetime journey and experience I am having.  I remind myself that I envisioned it two years ago.  I am smiling today.  I wish only the same for you.

A couple of weeks ago it hit me one day that I had lost sight of the shore.  I could no longer see the familiarity of home in the distant background.  I could no longer see whatever lies ahead or how long my journey will last.  I was finally out in the midst of wide open uncharted waters, as far as the eye could see.  My hope is that this is where I will truly discover “new lands”, mostly within myself. 

And so I am smiling on my journey.

___________________________

Orange leaves an old woman with a cane a crow calling overhead Autumn in Kyoto

__________________________

JAPAN

Today I pass the time reading a favorite haiku, saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating the same small, perfect grape again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it and leave its letters falling through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it. I say it in front of a painting of the sea. I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it, then I say it without listening, then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me, I kneel down on the floor and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton temple bell with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating pressure of the moth on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window, the bell is the world and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror, I am the heavy bell and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark, you are the bell, and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. 

Billy Collins