Roots In Motion

Roots in Motion. Starting yet another blog. As much as we try to dissect, classify, and make sense of the multiple parts of ourselves, we can never be truly successful. Nonetheless, I’m creating this one as a sort of journal about my travels, the lessons I’ve learned, what I am learning, and what I hope they can teach me. So let’s get started.

Japan. I’m off to my adopted home place yet again. Japan has always held a special place in my heart. From learning some Japanese at a young age, then being an exchange student there, volunteering at my old elementary school, a semester in college, and now, as an ALT on the JET Program. To say I’m not super excited would be a lie, but I want to see if I can flush out some emotions, the way I feel, and what I hope to accomplish during this next journey. Let’s see what the flowing type can do for me this time.

I’ve been a ton of places, not only been, but lived. I love that I can speak 3 languages (hoping and actively working to pick up more), this means that I used my English in London, used my Spanish in Costa Rica, and my Japanese in Japan. This also meant that while in Belgium and in Germany, I used my language skills to get by, and have come to realize that cultures and languages are so much more alike than they are different.

This is not to be confused with saying that cultures are the same. A personal example may help. When in Japan as an exchange student, the community I lived in was very much like the community I lived in El Paso. The people were pretty modest, very much a shame culture as well (for the El Paso, this is historically influenced by the strong Catholic presence, and for Japan this is influenced by the shogunates of yesteryear). I was a tad shocked at how “unculture shocked” I was compared to a few of my exchange peers, to me, this way of life was very similar to what I grew up with. But it’s not that simple.

London was my first experience in a big hustle and bustle kind of city (later I lived in New York). This was a whole lot different than what I was used to. This move was my first semester of college and after I had lived in Japan, so homesickness was very much an afterthought, an unexpected guest that rarely ever shows up in my life anymore. Here, the people were less humble, less friendly, and tons more direct (until I moved to New York). Despite this chaos, what I’ve learned over the years is that folks around the world have their routines, have their beliefs influenced by culture, and have dreams and aspirations just like anyone else. Let me talk a bit about this cultural beliefs point.

By necessity, adaptability was a characteristic I had to have as a child. Moving from place to place, divorced parents, always staying at someone else’s house, and my mother putting me into countless clubs and activities, I knew from an early age how to adapt to my surroundings. I’d argue that we all do this to one extent and another, and that we let the roles we think we need to fill at certain moments in time influence our actions. This is how for me, moving from London to Costa Rica back to New York to Japan back to El Paso and back to Japan, didn’t even cause me to blink an eye. A potentially stressful handful of experiences for most folks, this was my norm and I felt little stress, in fact I felt quite happy.

All of this stuff in my life has allowed me to focus on what I believe is really important. I’ve come to have my life defined by my actions, my doings, not the amount of money I have or the material goods I possess. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you that I hold onto clothes I use daily for years because I see no reason to throw them away, and I’m more interested in taking trips than getting a new phone or getting internet or the next fancy gadget. Because I don’t necessarily worry about every little detail of what tomorrow may carry, I try to live in the present. Don’t get me wrong, I still make plans and still do a lot with my life (i.e. applying to JET was intense and requires a ton of attention to detail) but what I mean is that little things I cannot necessarily predict or control don’t hold me back from living my life the way I’d like to. This is very liberating.

Hence where the travel comes in and the living in different worlds on a daily basis is now my norm and the thing that brings me comfort. Now how could living in different worlds bring me comfort, and isn’t that not being true to myself? Well, no. See, I am very much a believer that I should help people, but in order to do this, I have to be a good listener. Indeed, most people cannot “tell” you what it is they want in a few sentences. It’s not like others write grant letters that are concise and direct about the type of help they need. Life is so much more fluid than that. Listening well to others requires that to a great extent you live in their world.

My goal when I meet new people is to meet them. It’s not to always see how they can help me out professionally, what it is they can do for me, to impress them, or even what I can do for them. My goal is to see them as people, as fellow beings that share my existence, and whose beliefs, lifestyles, culture, language, and anything else can allow us to relate to each other and build some sort of bond even if it’s a slight one or even if it’s a temporary one.

Which is why in new situations I am quiet as a door nail. I am taking it all in and I am exploring my environment and analyzing every movement, every word, every glance, everything. Before I speak up, I try to be sure I am not imposing my own view, but have taken the views of others into consideration before I develop my own. This is a skill I have learned well, one that is a product of childhood chaos and adaptability, the constant movement overseas alone, my current job with SI, and my formal education at all levels of schooling.

So on this next journey to Japan, I’m not concerned about getting by in a “foreign” culture. I’ve abandoned the idea of “foreignness” a long time ago, and have very much embraced the idea of cultural relativism. I think that those who strongly oppose any inkling of relativism tend to be educated under one type of system, tend to be monolingual, and tend to have moved around the world very little. The idea of cultural relativism for me holds very strongly for me because of my experiences.

I’m not scared of a language barrier (in any language) and have learned to listen and be sponge brained and accepting when in new environments. Self-preservation isn’t about holding strong to your beliefs at all costs, it is about adapting to the ways of life of other people to grow yourself as a person that can relate to and learn from them.

I’m not even scared about living “alone” in another country all “by myself.” I’ve learned that the world over there are kind people, unexpected relationships and friendships that will bond you for a long time, and experiences and moments in time that you can always look back on to remember just how worthwhile living is. All you have to do is be willing to make friends, to talk, to explore, to listen, and to allow yourself to at times be uncomfortable with yourself and try things you may have never imagined doing. Things like eating raw horse, going to an onsen for a hot bath with tons of naked people, swimming in the ocean completely naked guided by moonlight, mooning a tour bus in Costa Rica, going to a temple and helping out in exchange for some food (or just helping out because it feels good), volunteering at your elementary school to see what it’s like to teach little ones and falling in love with this type of career, and endless amounts of events guided by instinct, by intuition, and by the simple willingness to live.

So rather than feel like I have to control things, that I cannot get by without being able to plan and determine some things, I do just the opposite. I think true control comes from understanding yourself well. I am not afraid of saying no to something I just don’t feel comfortable doing. The rest is just experience. The rest of life is taking days at a time, enjoying the moments in time that you can never repeat, is not about calendars and the unnatural sequence of “time” we’ve created. My life has taught me that life is for living, not worrying. There’s always a plan B, C, D, E, and forever going. There is no one right way to live, there is only your way to live, and to a great extent, we have a ton of control over how we choose to live. This is why I can do things like say “no” to going to Walmart because I do not support corporate culture even when my best friends and peers don’t see it as much of a big deal, this is why I can stay a vegetarian and rarely crave meat because my diet is diverse and I am not scared to branch out and try new things. It’s why I always have my head in the clouds and dreaming even when this may seem to others like inefficiency, may seem like I could be spending the time to “do something with my life.” Essentially, if I cannot dream, I can never accomplish them, and if I don’t take the time to dream, then how will I ever know what it is I truly want and if I never take the time to imagine what I truly want, then how can I ever do anything with my life? This is a constant process.

And finally, to end this post, living in a ton of places and cultures surrounded by many languages, I have come to realize that people are people, and people love to be people. So it’s not about capital or any other type of gain, but it’s about understanding that we’re all in the same boat whether we like it or not. Sure, the boat has certain parts to it. Some parts are seen as more desirable, others are more shoddy where only the “lower people” hang out, while yet others are for the crazy partiers, and yet others are for those who just love to sit around. But that doesn’t keep me from walking around the boat that is our earth, doesn’t keep me from hanging out with the “lower people,” doesn’t keep me from the occasional drunken party, doesn’t keep me from associating with the ritzy even when I am not so ritzy myself, and doesn’t keep me from sitting and relaxing silently with others. Because when the boat sinks, everyone sinks, there are no lifeboats here.

Without everyone on the boat, the experience is just not the same and life loses much of its essential essence. So on this boat, I try to be the active bridger. The one talking and listening to others, the one trying to make sense of multiple worldviews even when they seem conflicting (and then always finding more commonalities than anything else when I do this), and the one who constantly has their heads in the sky, dreaming of something better, of something beautiful. Like roots in motion, I use what I have to feed my soul as I move through the land, I am strong to where a simple wind or unexpected event cannot stop my path, I grow and shed and am renewed as the old leaves fall from my branches to feed the earth, and I use the sky to drink the sunlight that feeds my dreams.