Facing many trials and tribulations, our hero turns inward to examine the many facts and facets of what may or may not come to pass. What he finds is a dubious mental maze, simultaneously straight and strange. Will he find his way out, or will he force himself down an eternal number of dead ends? Only by the good graces of time will such decisions be revealed, as the truth may lie around any corner.
So, I have called this post, "Part:1" because I'm going to
write about this past week in two distinct modes: external and
internal. I have done a lot of thinking in this past week, and it's
usually in conjunction with what has gone on around me, be it plans,
activities, etc. However, the two can still be thought of as different, because while the events have all been separate, the thoughts have sort of melded together.
When I'm feeling down, I always have a bit of a system to make myself feel better. First, I try to put a positive spin on things (I don't have to go to work today, I get to go to work) if I'm looking at them negatively, though this is rarely an issue. Then, I try to list all of the impossible things that I have believed up to that point of the day. If that doesn't work, then I try to list all of the good and amazing things around me that I am lucky to be alive to experience (my apartment is on the second story. I am literally living in a cube that is suspended in midair by the cube beneath it, and therefore up within the etherious substance which at once corrodes my existence and continues it). If that doesn't work, then I try to think of something fun for the day. For example (I've used this story too much already, but one more time won't hurt), one day in my first week, I decided to go to work as Earnest Hemingway pretending to be Austin Schock, and my goal was for no one to find out who I really was. And you know what? It worked. Another time, when I was in college, I decided to see how long I could go without saying the letter 'w'. It was hard, but I went for five whole hours before I broke. It's fun things like that which can bring on a smile in a dark time.
Things have been up and down. While I have never quite gotten back to the point of, "you know, I could do at least two years," I have at least had some moments where getting through this year seems less inferno and more purgatorio, by which I mean that it will be less a time of abject suffering and more a time of general, bland contentment. That's not to say that I cannot find any joy in this place, far from it, but more that there is just something wrong.
And that's the problem. I really enjoy living in Japan. I really enjoy teaching, and more and more I am finding that I really like teaching older child students--read High School. I have figured out most of the more difficult parts of living here, and have begun to thrive in a way that I never knew I could. Everything is going well, everything feels as though it's falling into place, and therefore I feel that I should be happy here. But, overall, I'm just not, and I don't know why.
One of my earliest memories comes from when I was still learning a lot of English. I had figured out that if someone asks you a, "do you want?" question, and you say yes, then they will give it to you. We were in Costco buying groceries, and my parents asked me if I wanted an orange something. I didn't know what the word was, but it had to do with one of those free samples. Then my parents said a pair of words that I recognized, "orange juice." Yes, I thought, I wanted orange juice. But I did not get orange juice, instead I got this weird frozen orange thing. Looking back at it, my parents wanted to know if I would like an orange Popsicle sample, and had probably said that it was like orange juice. But I didn't understand that at the time. I had been promised orange juice, and had been denied. I know that they got me at least one more, because I was starting to throw a tantrum, but I was just really frustrated. I had been promised something, my expectations had been dashed, and I did not have the ability to understand what was going on, nor to express how I felt.
I bring up this story for a couple of reasons. The first, and most apparent, is that this kind of frustration is what I feel right now. I don't know why I am unhappy, what reasons would conspire to rob me of my joy; I only know what I feel, and I cannot express it to myself or to others. And that's a really frustrating occurrence, mostly because I feel as though I should be able to at least express it to myself. I teach English, and here I sit having the same problem as many of my students do with my own language.
That's not to say that I don't have theories of what is going on. It could be that I'm reacting badly to the sense of impermanence of it all. I like to be someone who, to use the phrase, puts down roots. True, I could do this job until I die, but with the high turnover rate--especially with my position--that doesn't feel like a very probably option. It could also be--within the same vein--that there is no strong feeling of continuation in my work. I like to think in the relative short term--say five years--but I also like to link it to the long term of, minimum, a decade and usually much longer. I don't have that kind of historical connection at my work place as most of us are relatively new. That this job has a steep-yet-quick learning curve helps mask this fact, but it still makes me feel as though what I'm doing is not going to matter much in the long run because, due to high turnover, I am very easily replaceable. There are so many applicants for my position--and I expect everyone else's--that I cannot help but have the feeling that most of us could easily have been swapped with someone else and yet still things would have proceeded as they have. That is not to say that I do not respect or admire my co-workers--far from it, and I think that they all do excellent jobs--but that, for me at least, I don't feel as though what I'm doing is all that special.
To top things off, while I love my alone time, I also love to feel that I am part of a deep community that is linked not on superficial-surface aspects, but on a deeper, more personal connection. Here in Japan, though, that superficial-surface aspect of people is what is held in higher respect. Everything is about making sure that things appear as good and bright and optimistic as possible. There are, of course, cracks in the surface--yes, I am thinking economically at this point--but so long as the surface remains whole, the underlying issues can be ignored. And I am fine with that, and I am glad that it makes them happy, but this drive to have a focus on appearance does not jive with my base personality very well. Basically, I cannot find seem to create the kind of community that I want to live in--the kind that is in my area, the kind that prizes small connections over big ones, the kind where, "what value do you most treasure in your friends" is considered a better question than, "who is your favorite/ crushies/ adjectivest actor?"
Overall, these are just thoughts and ideas of what might be some causes of this generally wrongness for me. I will say it right here and right now, however, that I am learning a lot from this experience. For one, I am learning many skills that will help me later in life. For another, I am learning how to better empathize with people who I disagree with on some fundamental issues. I used to blindly wonder why acceptance could be very hard for some people, when it seems the only thing to do for me. After all, why try to change someone and reduce what it means to be human, when you can instead accept and expand for both yourself and all of humanity? The answer, I have learned, is fundamentally about culture. All human beings, whether they be introvert or extrovert, hermit or nudist(?), outgoing or ingoing, have a need to feel as though they belong. This belonging could only exist as far as the person, or it could extend out to reach large, multinational groups of people. Regardless, some people never quite feel as though they belong anywhere, but find places where they belong more than others...and this is getting weird and isn't quite what I want to say. Basically, people need to belong, have culture, have a way to organize the world and themselves, and basically to live. The term central pole comes to mind, but isn't quite right. Regardless, we all tend to need these things to mentally survive. But when someone--or a large group of someones--come along who are happily living withing a framework counter to that which we have assembled for ourselves, it can be a terrifying revelation. We live within our own framework, and in many ways have deluded ourselves into believing that ours is the only path to happiness. But to find someone living outside of our framework genuinely happy brings up the idea that there are other paths to our personal nirvana. If that is so, then it can call into question the validity of our own framework. What if we are not as happy as we could be in another framework? What if what we have been living under is a lie, and the true path to happiness rests in another's way? Our bedrock begins to tremble and shake in the ensuing chaos, until we at last either accept what is going on, or utterly fight back against such a notion. In that case, we fight back even harder against other notions, hoping to wipe them out so as to rid ourselves of any question and doubt.
So, which is the better way, to fight back or to accept? My instinct is to accept, and by doing so I must concede that in some cases fighting back against any acceptance might be the better path. But as for right here and right now, I still find acceptance to be the better path. Even for those who may hate and revile me, even for those who think I should change, even living within a culture whose very core sense of what is important is seemingly irreparably distant from my own, I must accept all of those things. The best that I can do is to attempt to leave a community with my imprint, a hybrid that can help cross the cultural divide. These things take time, which is why I have no plans to leave as of yet, but I fear that my time in Japan is going to be a constant struggle between what I want and what I need. I want to stay here, teach, and finish out my contract, but I need to get out of this place. While my wants supersede my needs, I will stay. However, if my needs ever overcome my wants, then away I shall leave, never again to return to this manner of living.
Whooo, did that get a little deeper than I thought it would. Like I said, I brought up the story earlier for two reasons. One, the above, is that it best reflects my current emotional standing. The other is that it reflects my language development. Aside from a couple of phrases, I'm not really sure how well I can speak Japanese. I don't know many words, and I have not tried beyond a single phrase in an izakaya (please see part: 2). However, the other night I had a dream in broken Japanese. That fact, coupled with the way in which I could intuit what the bank people were telling me the other day and that I would stand at the correct door of the train before the English translation came on seems to indicate that I am developing an intuitive knowledge of Japanese. I have only been here about two and a half months, so I would say that I'm doing fairly well with the language. What puzzles me is that I can't verbally reproduce many of the words that I apparently know, nor do I know where I picked half of these terms up. I was thinking in bed last night, "how would I say my cat is green?" and a complete sentence popped into my head. Things were never quite like this with Spanish, so learning Japanese is progressing in a very different way. It seems to be working, though (*knock on wood*), so we'll see what happens.
Anyway, part: 2 should be posted tomorrow. Before I sign off, I would like to personally thank Dorothy Schock (mum), Alexa (sister), Michael Schock (dad), Angela Schock (step-mom), Janice Schock (grandmother), Bob Schock (grandfather), Kaitlyn, Scott, Chris (the guybrarian), Anne (the awesome one), and Edge (the mathemagician) for their kind written words. I'd also like to thank all of those kind people at Willamette for their awesome spoken words. Lastly, as you can see from the above, what I really need is an emotional connection. While physical things will help me pass the time, they will not help me achieve much real happiness. I do appreciate them, but this is one battle that I am going to have to face (relatively) alone. One little request, though; please hold my beloved little dog, Domanique, in your thoughts and prayers. He's going in for surgery today (Oregon Monday), and if something were to happen, that probably would spell the end of my time in Japan. *Knock on wood*
This has been another (slightly less) exciting Adventure in the Austentatious. If you liked me, tell your friends; if you hated me, tell your enemies; and if you didn't care either way, tell everyone. Please stay tuned for part two, published in the morning.
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