Phantom limb

I still catch myself daydreaming about Japan.

About the comforting sound of train announcements.
About the sense of excitement entering a FamilyMart.
About the calm strolling down their walkable streets.
About the quiet gentle people going about their day.

It’s just a trip, I’d say to myself. A particularly good one, perhaps.

But…

But maybe some places are not just vacations. Not just transitionary. Maybe there’s a story written there with you in it… still waiting to be finished.

A better life you didn’t know you could have.
A home where you felt more at home than your own home.
A kind people you unexpectedly fell in love with over and over again.
A daily happiness which always felt far from grasp, but so freely abundant there.

The past four decades I worked really hard to fix and better my country, my city, my home, to contribute, volunteer, help, in any way I could. But nothing’s changed much. But it’s not that I’m upset nothing changed. It’s that I felt it needed fixing so bad.

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” – E.B. White

And for once, I found a place where I feel I didn’t need to fix. It ain’t perfect though, it has it’s own set of social and moral issues. But it was enough, for me. It filled me with a desire to simply enjoy it.

So maybe Japan wasn’t just a trip.

It’s a phantom limb, a past life memory.
A strange, deep familiarity that despite never having lived there, I feel like I’ve always lived there.

It’s a reminder. It’s a calling, calling.