Run Away

On Friday, I will have been in Japan a year. Like any anniversary, of marriage, of birth, of escape, the event urges me to reflect. What have I learned?

In the past, such reflections have always concluded with the thought that “I still know nothing”. I regarded the epiphany as profound and humble. That was, after all, Plato’s final conclusion after a lifetime of debating and philosophizing. Lao Tzu made a similar discovery at the end of his life, deeming nothingness as the highest form of understanding. Why shouldn’t I too arrive at the same conclusion some 365 days after leaving Colorado? Aren’t I wise enough to realize I know nothing?

If I said that this time around, that I’ve learned nothing, I’d be lying. I’ve learned a ton.

For one, Japanese. When I arrived I was but a baby and I feel now that I have grown years in the realm of language. Don’t get me wrong, years in the realm of language would still put me at about the level of a two or three year old, since I started from zero. But regardless, my three year old level Japanese can keep up with easy conversations, speak about my needs, wants, likes, dislikes, hopes and plans. I have made friends with whom I only speak Japanese, and we spend whole days together and I communicate almost everything that I want to in that time period. Though at any given time I might only understand 50% of what my friends are saying back to me, I can still keep up. I can describe vocabulary that I don’t know, ultimately getting my point across, and I can make jokes, some of which are even funny. In one year, I have to say that I am happy with what I can accomplish in Japanese.

I have also taken in endless amounts of cultural lessons. I know the difference between, shio, shouyu and miso ramen. I can distinguish whether writing is hiragana, katakana, or kanji. I am familiar with Japanese historical periods, holidays and religious traditions. I know proper etiquette when entering someone’s house, when meeting a new colleague at work, and when addressing my superiors. I know about popular manga and anime, but admittedly I don’t really care about any of it. I don’t know what to do in an earthquake, but I know what one feels like. I know how to pass the Japanese Driver’s Test first try. I know which trash goes in what bag and what day of the week to put it out on the corner for pick up. I know how to karaoke. I know how to sit formally and informally. And I know that there are things in Japanese culture that I will never understand, and I’m just fine with that.

But all of that knowledge is still mostly reliant on facts and memorizing patterns. I would hope that by now I have also gained some deeper knowledge, some discovery of self that is worth the year of time here. Have I?

When I left Colorado my mother asked me if this need to live abroad is really just my way of running away from something. The question was valid, especially for my mother, since I left for Peru after my parent’s divorce, and left again for Japan after she got remarried. It would appear that I was running away from adapting to a tumultuous and changing family.

In a sense, that might be true, but I do not believe that to be the reason for my travels. Before divorce and remarriage, I was still in love with venturing into the unknown and learning from the challenge of it. My parents told me that when I was a toddler and we went on a family trip to the mountains, I wandered off by myself and went missing for hours. When I was five or six, I remember leaving my home at night, packing up my backpack with my survival essentials (Ninja Turtle action figures, and toy cars) and riding my bicycle through the neighborhood, into streets that I had never been to before. By high school I was taking road trips to California, Arizona, and Canada with friends and, after graduation, I made my truck a permanent home and went traveling across America, climbing for a year.

My history of travel and exploring makes me wonder not what I am running away from, but what am I running towards. What do I want to get out of this? And why haven’t I found it yet?

Because happiness is elusive.

I’ve concluded (in the temporal sense of the word) the following:

I am running toward the satisfaction that comes from learning about new cultures and new languages. I am running to continually indulge in the feeling of encountering a limit, say living in Japan without knowing Japanese, and then breaking through that limit. I am running toward more self discovery, which intentional travel provides in bucketfuls. I am running towards the hope that I will know something about this world before I depart from it permanently. I am running for more interactions with new and different people, for the discovery of a new animal species in the seafood section at the grocery store, for an evening drinking tea with my girlfriend while she lay in my arms, for conversations that I’ve never had before, for ideas I’ve never considered, for the feeling of fulfillment that comes when I stop and realize “I am here. I have made it to here” before I look out at the expanse and see all the other places I wish to run to. I am running because movement makes me know that I am alive, and speed makes me know that I am strong. I am running to journey, to wander, to get lost, to find, to see and to learn. For this I am running towards, and not away; Because what lay ahead of me is the entire world and if I stay put I will know nothing of it.

There is indeed a lot to run towards.

And that which I leave behind is not something that I am running away from. It is what I carry with me to guide my running, to make sure I plant my feet deliberately and push forward consciously. I run with the arrogance of Spain, the humility of Chile. I run with the friendships I made in Peru, in Wales, in Colorado. I run with divorces, new marriages, new families and old loves. I run with my mother, my father, my sister, my grandmother. With best friends and worst enemies. I run with the memories of days on rock walls in Eldorado Canyon and nights staring at the stars in Patagonia. I run knowing that the experiences I carry with me are good, and good experiences can fill a being like water fills a jar.

No, there is nothing to run away from.

As I write this, my experience in Japan is ending. I will not be here next year. I have set my sights on the next adventure, the next far away land on the horizon. I will begin running again. And this time I will take the knowledge of ramen, of earthquakes, of writing forms, bowing, reverence, patience and grace that I have learned in Japan and carry it with me as I have everything else. And despite the load, I will feel light.

But for now, Japan is wonderful and I am happy to have been here for a year of profound learning. It looks like I’ll come out of this knowing something after all.