Anti-Exploration? Moi?

I’ve been thinking about why I haven’t been exploring Japan.   Not necessarily the country at large, but just the big things around me.  If I really wanted to get to know the place, I would be out there, doing things, discovering.  I’d be researching at home, and heading out most nights to acquaint myself.  And yet, here I sit, exhausted and avoiding, several nights a week.  (Sure, I go out here and there, but I’m clearly not out to get to know the place for real, so far as my own standards go.)

Hopping into the shower this evening, I ended up sitting half an hour under the hot water, only half-conscious, pondering back over this thought: Why is it that I don’t want to get to know Japan?

Am I worried that I might come to love being in a place, which initially met me with such great distaste and dislike, that I didn’t want to enjoy it?  Am I concerned that, if I like it here, I’ll stay longer, thereby increasing my time of being solo in life?  Or is it that I’m terrified I might discover that I’m actually more than okay ending up solo for the rest of my life?  Hey, perhaps it’s something else entirely (though, knowing me as I do, I’m thinking the first three have a good amount of influence on the current state of things).  Whatever the case, though, it is clear that I’m afraid of getting to know and like Japan.

I know there are plenty of wonderful things all around me, and at any number of distances away from me.  I Want to see them, experience them, learn from them, and then share them with others.  Yet I regularly find myself scared even considering looking up some bit of research to go somewhere.  I almost did it last week, but I chickened out at the last minute, and didn’t go (maybe I’ll make that my first jump fully into the mix of discovering Japan!).  I cam up with reasonable reasons not to go, of course, as I always do.  But I just as well would have come up with fabulous reasons for going, had I gone…., except that I didn’t go, and I never do go.

I did the same thing in Germany, in a sense.  I think, at that time, I was afraid of letting go of what I left behind me, back in Houston.  I so wanted to let go, it pained me to hold on, but I just wouldn’t let it all go (at first, anyway – I eventually got over it and totally loved everything about where I was now).  And it left me trapped in my room most days, instead of out exploring the beautiful town, filled with amazing, kind people.  …Hmm… that has me wonder: Am I unwilling to let go of something from before coming here?  (Gosh, that would make loads of sense!  Why have I only just thought of it?  Anyway, moving on…)  I think so, but I’m not sure what it is…  tonight’s homework(!) is what it is.  I’m going to see what I’m avoiding letting go, and turn a bit Elsa on it (song and all!).  Then I’m going to rock on the world of Japan, like the true fabulous explorer and lover I am.

Love to you all

Day 37 of 40