Comparisons and perspective

It hit me recently that when I told my family I was moving to Japan, they didn't argue with that decision.  They didn't even grill me on the details of why.  It was just kinda accepted.  So I haven't really been forced to articulate why I needed to come here, why I needed to work for a Japanese company.  Other than I needed to.  There's a reason there, but its worrisome I can't articulate it better.

That worry and doubt of course leads to asking if this is the right path for me, when there were any number of options that didn't involve leaving the states.  (Most of them revolved around gainful employment, which I wasn't otherwise finding, but that's a different story.)  But thinking about this in November, when I went back to campus for The Game and had a chance to see a glimpse of what my college friends were up to, something else hit me:

"Oh crap.  Everyone's so much happier than me".

Maybe "happier" wasn't the right word for it.  "Doing better"?

I was jealous of how much of the college network everyone else seemed to retain even after moving away. A staggering proportion of my JE friends ended up in the DC area, and get to see each other all the time.  A further staggering amount of couples stayed together, something I had considered so impossible after my own experiences with distance.  I thought it so impossible that I didn't even dare to ask before Graduation what they were planning on doing afterwards, assuming it would be a touchy subject.  Most everyone had jobs in something they really wanted to do (at this point I was still jobhunting and feeling pretty anxious about it).

Nobody else had an hour commute to and from work, nobody else had lost 10 pounds because of a spartan budget, nobody else struggled with something so basic as buying groceries because they couldn't read the label.

Of course, some of this is just the inevitably human tendency of thinking the grass is always greener.  And realistically, I'm sure everyone else has their share of difficult things they're dealing with that I didn't get during our too short (always too short) reunions.  In the day and a half of alumni coming back to campus, I only got serious, lengthy conversations with a small handful of people as I tried to see everyone at overlapping events.

Corinna (one of my JE friends, who of course knows lots of other friends from college working near her in NY, and has a comfy living situation, and is still together with her college sweetheart, yadayada) came for a visit two weeks ago on her way to visit her family in China, and spent the weekend at my place.  It was great to see her for many reasons, including making the world feel a little more connected, that a Yale friend might casually drop in to Shinkawasaki station for a visit.  She also provided me with perhaps a much-needed dose of perspective.

To a lot of my friends, I'm the one with the enviable position, the incredible freedom to jetset around the world.  Somebody is paying me, not because I produce a profit for them, but so that I can invest in myself.  I'm in such a fantastical wonderland every day that seeing Mt. Fuji or eating fried squid is mundane.  

Corinna is very wise.  Also she brought these AWESOME maple cream cookies.  God bless Canada.


Again, because I am delinquent on pictures, instead please look at the internet-famous Shironeko blog, a series of videos devoted to stacking things on top of cats.