Who would have thought that I would spend a year of my life living in Asia? I never even had any real desire to go to Asia, until I met my circus acrobat friends, who are from China. But the desire that developed out of those friendships was merely a cultural trade among friends – I had shared it of my home with them, and now they wanted to give the same to me. In essence, I want to go to China to be with my friends, not because I am specifically aiming to see China. Nothing against China, of course – I just have never had a real desire to see it.
On that note, – let’s roll with the thoughts here – I feel as though I have a rather ability to distinguish between my real desires and my that-would-be-cool desires. I explain. When I have what I am currently calling a “real desire”, it is something that I intend to pursue. With general desires, they are things that would be nice to pursue, but I have no deeper intentions to pursue them. These are, of course, both to varying degrees.
Being a multi-millionaire would be amazing. I desire it. I truly do. However, it is not something I intend to pursue, as much as I may wish to attain it. It is a general desire for me. Returning to German-speaking Europe for Christmas markets is a “real desire”, as I am calling them (Can you tell that I don’t much like my current terminology?). No, I will not do it this year, most likely, and probably not next year either. However, it is in my thoughts, and I intend to do it at some point.
This is where the varying degrees comes in for distinguishing. This is one of my middle-range real desires. Yes, I want to do it, and yes, I believe I will do it. No, I am not in a hurry to do it. Having a frozen margarita in Texas is more of an immediate real desire. I will not wait for this one to come up somewhat conveniently, and then take action, or casually plan for it in my some time soon future. My mother is picking me up at the airport when I arrive home to Houston, and she has known for months that I want to go have margaritas the day I arrive. We are getting margaritas within hours of my arrival to Texas, and are only taking that long, because I want it fresh, customs and immigration and baggage take time, and the airport is a ways away from good margaritas. Essentially, I am pursuing this desire as soon as it is possible for it to be fulfilled.
One other example, just for clarity (or to confuse you more, if this all doesn’t make sense to you), could be in my desire to bungee jump off a bridge that is over water. Something a long time ago gave me the desire, but it was more of an unreal desire for me. I didn’t expect my life to have it ever be an option. However, once I went small-scale bungee jumping with friends, it began to shift to a real desire. I was afraid to pursue it, so I left it in the gray area, ready to be pursued, should the opportunity arise. Now that I have lived somewhere that offers such a thing, – Ibaraki, Japan – I see myself pursuing it. I notice that it is not huge in my list of desires, but it is a real one. The opportunity presented itself two weeks ago, and I made arrangements to go jump. Of course, timing was such that I got dreadfully sick the day beforehand, and so rescheduled with my friend. I am now scheduled to go with a different friend next week. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll be okay. This is a real desire that I have, but it is so much on a non-time limit that I am okay not doing it now – I know I will get around to it at some point, so I don’t have to hassle myself extremely to make it work at this one place. That being said, I really do want to handle it all now, and bungee off my bridge in Japan, partly because it’s one less thing for me to think about in the future, and partly because it makes for a fun story. And I used the word “handle,” not because I dislike the situation, but because a lot of things here recently have kind of been a real hassle for me, and so I tend to think more in terms of ‘managing’ things in life for the next two weeks, as opposed to just ‘living’ life and ‘creating’ things, and all that jazz.
Anyway, that was a fun tangent for me. I could have explained it loads better, but I didn’t. I hope that’s okay for now. I’m sitting on a train to go up to my final festival in Japan, and I really need to pee, but don’t want to bother using what might be a gross train toilet (notice that I have no concern for leaving my belongings at my seat – score one big one for Japan on this point), when I know I can make it all the way to the station. So, I have written this to help me pass the time without wandering thoughts on the discomfort of a filling bladder (the realness of the discomfort can be evidenced by the fact that my shorts haven’t been buttoned for close to an hour already). I dislike writing on my phone, and for more than one reason (physical slowness of thumb typing and high error rate are two of the main ones). Therefore, I’ll end with this:
I never expected to end up living in Asia, for any period of time. I especially did not expect it to be for longer than I had lived in any country other than my own. I like Europe. I would have expected my doing a year there long before I even visited Asia. But here I am, one year through (and very through, I do believe) life in Asia. It has turned out that Japan is not a very good place for me to live my life, but that I really do appreciate Asia. I actually have real desire to return to Asia, and to experience more of it. Japan, Korea, and Singapore have only gotten me started, it seems.
In a way, it is stressful, because there are now even more places I want to visit. However, I will just roll with what life offers to me, and aim for returning for at least one visit for a start, hopefully within the next few years. I’d say that this is a middle-range real desire, similar to, and likely above the Christmas Market one. It’ll happen, I believe, as I have full intentions for it to happen. It’s a real desire I have. Life does what it does, though, so we’ll just have to see. For now, I’m at the end of the train line in the next minute or three, so I’ll go wrangle my baggage – giving away loads of nut butters, smoothie boosters, and spices, as well as my Magic Bullet (c) (Is that right?) – and head for my friend who is meeting me at the station. Then I’ll use a bathroom either there or at her nearby home. And then we’ll enjoy fireworks and a festival, possibly in the rain. Whatever the case, we will enjoy it, which is a main part of what called to mind my thoughts on having lived here in the first place.
Post-a-day 2017
hannah ananas 