運命

It's early in the morning. I'm about to leave home for Japan again, this time maybe for the last time.

I really enjoyed my time here, and leaving again is hard, as it has been the last three times I have done it. I had a great time with my friends and family.

But it's time to go back.

I've realized that life is a whirlwind, always taking you somewhere new and unknown. We get lost in routine and expectations, but each day is different and new. Now I am in a familiar room in the United States of America, this evening - or tomorrow, due to time travel - I shall be in my temporary home in Japan.

All homes are temporary, really. I lived in Virginia once. New Jersey, too. I think of Connecticut as home, now, but is it really? It can't be. I'm leaving again, as I so often do. I wonder when I'll leave for the last time.

I have things to do in Japan. I know I do. I'm drawn to that place, even if this might be the last stretch of my time there.

At my art school, every teacher is asked to give a kanji describing their past year. Or the new year. I forget which. Either way, the kanji I wanted to choose was 運命, or fate. Everything happens for a reason, both good and bad, both wonderful and horrible, moments you want to last forever and moments of burning fire that make you feel as if you're in a nightmare. They're all for a reason. They all lead to a good place. They make us whole, the yin and yang.

But it had to be a single kanji, so I chose 命. 命 can mean fate or destiny, too, according to the dictionary anyway, but it really means life. Life, always changing, changing shape and disappearing as fast as clouds do. But at the same time rigidly set in place towards a wonderful grand cosmic scheme, every fading cloud or blustering whirlwind a piece of a great puzzle we can't fully comprehend. Order coming out of chaos, chaos having no true power in the end.

Life, fate. They're kind of one and the same, anyway.

I have things I need to do. Some of which I know, others of which I don't. Not yet.

I eagerly await my last six months in Japan.

I do not eagerly await the 20+ hour flight.