At the time of writing, I found myself on the top of a small hill on the japanese island of tsushima.
Even though it's a not such a high hill, from it you can see pretty much the whole island. I can see the only school in the island with some children playing football, i can see the ships coming and going, probably on the way to korea, some other hills and a few roads with almost no cars and no traffic.
It's a very quiet island indeed, i've only seen a handful of people in the last few hours.
And i remember it was 2010, last time i was to japan, since then i had forgotten all those conflicting feelings and what being in japan represents for me.
All my life I've felt lonely, that's nothing special i guess, everyone feels lonely, but for me Japan
represents my true nature, the one I can't escape from, the one buried deep in my mind and the one that makes me understand, that it's just me, there's no one else.
Before I came to japan for the first time, I had spent the last 10 years preparing for that moment and had probably spent more time
into japanese stuff, manga, anime, videogames, music, books, etc, that I had spent at school or with friends. So in my mid 20's i knew more about Japanese culture, art and history that I knew about any other country.
All my life I felt like Japan was calling me, it was drawing me, but for some reason I didnt make it there until recently, mostly because I was afraid,
I was afraid that it would be expensive, that i wont be able to find a job, I thought maybe my japanese wasn't good enough, afraid of the discrimination foreigners face here but mostly i was afraid of what i could find here, something I knew it existed, I knew it was here waiting for me, but I didn't quite understand yet.
I was afraid of my true nature and to understand that it was the end, that was it, japan was the end of my journey, the place where everything would make sense (finally!).
All together I spent only 6 months in Japan, but it sure felt like 6 years. And pretty much every day during those 6 months, the country reminded me in countless ways, that
I'm on my own.
Wouldn't say I found what I was looking for here, but I sure found what i was meant to find, the last piece of the puzzle that would help put everything together, so that I can move on.
Japan taught me that solitude doesn't mean not having love, friends or family around you, it's something deeper. You can feel it in the air, on the trees, on people's faces, on the buildings, it's everywhere, you cant escape it and everyone there knows it.
It's not a coincidence that japan has by far higher suicide rates than any other country.
It's not about the stress on the working life or the pressure and competition everyone's exposed to, it's nto about having to support your family and live up to whatever crazy expectations they have, it's not about people being shy or afraid relationships.
Death is in the air and you can feel it the second you set food in Japan.
And even though, while being in Japan i'm in touch with my true self, my true nature. I understand why I exist this universe, I can understand and accept my destiny, I'm actually quite happy to know, that I'll be out of here soon.
Maybe this post was a bit sad, so look! a puppy!
I have recently come to terms with the fact that its ok to answer "nothing" to the question "what do you do".
Most of my life everyone around me said: "Bruno, you have to do something, you have to be someone, you have to do this and that, you have to be this and that."
You are what you do, they said. Our jobs make us proud, gives us honor, makes us decent people, if you don't have a job you are a bad person and nobody will respect you, they said.
If you don't work you will not have money, and you'll have a hard life, they said.
But they forgot to mentioned the pain and the sadness I would feel riding the subway on the way home, while coming back from work at 9.30 pm and seeing everyone's sad faces. You can ride for hours and not seeing a single smiley person.
They didn't tell me how miserable I would feel while walking the same streets every day at the same time, how monotonous my life will become.
Nobody mentioned the stress I would feel, how sick it would make me, and how hard it would be to fall asleep at night, thinking of all the stressful things that happened during the day, and thinking what's waiting for me tomorrow.
And of course they also forgot to tell me about that feeling in the morning, when I know I hadn't had enough sleep, but I still have to get up and go somewhere i don't want to go and do something I don't want to do.
And about all those times when i wish i were dead, no one told me about that either.
I wish someone had said to me when i was young "you don't need to do anything or be anything, just relax and stop taking life so damn serious!".
I wish someone had explain me how stress works, wish they had explain me what chemicals come out of sports or meditation. And wish someone had told me it was ok to do nothing, that life is too short to spend it fulfilling other people's expectations.
So now that i learned all of that by myself, I can confidently answer "nothing" when people say "what do you do?".
Of course it's not true, I don't do nothing, I go to korean class 6 times a week now, do some part time acting and teaching, hiking and taek won do, volunteering, reading, writing, play football, travel often, meet people, go out almost every day and do a bunch of stuff more.
And everyone does lots of things, but the reason to answer "nothing" is just not saying what they want to hear, they want to hear "I study" or "I work" or better yet, "I work AND study" so they can feel like you are an obedient member of society contributing to it daily. Therefore paying, what in their minds are, your dues for being alive.
In order live in this planet and not being rejected by the members of it's society, you need to either study or work.
What we see here is that the herd doesn't need a shepherd anymore, and anyone who dares threatening their beliefs, will be immediately left behind to survive on their own.
They have created a system that auto protects itself, by isolating and excluding any individual who doesn't want to do what the others are doing. Anyone who doesn't wan to work or study will be left out of the herd.
Bruno: But life is too short to just study or work, don't you think so?
You: No.
As I've already mentioned, when people meet each other for the first time, 95% of times, they will ask each other a set of predefined questions in order to do one or more of the following things:
1- Judge each other.
2- Predict what course the relationship will take.
3- Place the other person in a social or hierarchical position either higher or lower to their owns.
4- Complete the first step in order to move to the next step in the relationship, which is usually: doing things together.
Note: If the "doing things together" step is, for some reason, completed before the set of questions is asked, as in the case of a group of people getting together to play a game, a sport, watch a movie or an activity that doesn't allow for the questions to be asked at the first encounter, they have to be asked immediately upon competition of the activity. Otherwise the participants wont be able to move to the 3rd step of the relationship.
The questions they ask are the following:
1- Where are you from?
2- What do you do?
3- How long have you been in *insert country name here*?
4- How long will you stay?
5- Why did you come?
6- How do you like it here?
After you meet at least 10.000 people, and they ask you this same questions you can start (intentionally or not) predicting:
1- Which of this questions they will ask you.
2- In which order.
3- The answer they would like to hear.
4- Their answer to the question they are asking.
5- And why are they asking that question? Most common reasons include:
a) - Because that's just the way it is. They are normal people and that's what normal people ask.
b) - Because they want to sincerely interact or get to know you, and that's the socially accepted way of doing so.
c) Because they want something from you (money, sex, companionship, business partnership, etc)
d) For you to ask them the same questions back, so they can get some kind of confidence or reassurance from his their answers either because they are somehow better than yours or because they are pleased with them.
e) - For the satisfaction that comes along when interacting with another person. We feel sociable, confident, fulfilled.
Note: 10.000 is the number required to learn the skill, after that you get 1 skill level every 1.000 interactions. Skill level determines accuracy.
How is it possible to predict this stuff? how does it works?
1rst: Our brain unconsciously recognizes a series of patters it has seen before (this patterns have to be seen at least a dozen times before they can start to be recognized).
For example: This guy you just met, lets call it Kevin. Wears a hat indoors, grew up in canada, is pretty well built, travels with his girlfriend, studied law and asks you many questions.
Your brain will remember the mental connections it made before to guys called Kevin, to people wearing a cap indoors, to law students, and so on.
2nd: Our brain analyzes this familiar patterns, creates associations, that will later be linked to feelings or emotions we felt (to make them easier to remember and recognize in the future).
For example: This guy kevin, made a good impression one me, I felt like I can trust him, so from now on, I will start trusting people with similar features to his.
Bonus and modifiers:
- If you can speak 6 or more languages at an intermediate level at least, you get to automatically recognize the speakers mother tongue.
Note: Target must be say at least 10 words in his language.
- If you have been to at least 40 countries you automatically recognize the person country of origin or where they spent most of their life at, based only on their appearance, facial expression and body language.
Note: To use this ability you must be at least 10m away from target and make visual contact for at least 2 minutes.
Familiar face 1: Have you heard anything from Bruno?
Familiar face 2: Haven't heard anything for a few weeks actually, I wonder what he's up to.
Familiar face 1: Do you think he's alright?
Familiar face 2: Yeah, you know how he is, sometimes goes dark for no reason, or maybe just hasn't had internet access.
Familiar face 1: I'm a bit worried though, he always logs into couchsurfing at least once a month, it's been 3 months now.
Familiar face 2: I'm sure he's just going through one of his phases, maybe now is the "not signing into couchsurfing phase".
Familiar face 1: What if he needs our help?
Familiar face 2: He would ask for it.
Familiar face 1: Would he?
Familiar face 2: Probably not, but he knows how to take care of himself. He'll be fine, I tell ya.
Familiar face 1: He doesn't know how to take care of himself, he's just a child!
Familiar face 2: Children are reckless.
Familiar face 3: Sup?
Familiar face 2: Hey!
Familiar face 1: We were just talking about you.
Familiar face 3: Really?
Familiar face 1: No.
Familiar face 2: We were talking about Bruno.
Familiar face 3: Oh, I saw him yesterday.
Familiar face 2: On irc?
Familiar face 3: No, met for d&d.
Familiar face 1: Any news?
Familiar face 3: He said he was working as an extra at some korean drama, hanging out with some celebrities, taking some Korean lessons 4 times a week, and the rest of the time stays at home studying.
Familiar face 2: So he must be fluent by now.
Familiar face 1: Korean is useless, he should be studying Chinese. Chinese is the future.
Familiar face 2: I thought he spoke Chinese already.
Familiar face 1: Really? I thought he spoke Japanese.
Familiar face 3: He said he wants to learn Korean because it sounds cute.
Familiar face 2: And why on earth would he want to sound cute?
Familiar face 1: For no good reason, you know how he is.
Familiar face 2: Stubborn.
Familiar face 3: He's alright.
Familiar face 4: Morning!
Familiar face 3: It's 8 PM.
Familiar face 4: Same.
Familiar face 2: You brought pizza!!!
Familiar face 4: Yep.
Familiar face 1: Awesome!
Familiar face 3: We were starving.
Familiar face 4: I know.
Familiar face 2: Thank you sooo much.
Familiar face 4: My pleasure.
Familiar face 3: Hey, how was the interview?
Familiar face 4: I got it, you're looking at the new pressident of the united states.
Familiar face 2: That's it? no polls, speaches, elections?
Familiar face 4: Well, there's still some bureaucracy here and there, campaing adds, interviews, "elections", but I got the job, that's what matters.
Familiar face 3: President? What are you talking about? I thought you applied for a job at the supermarket.
Familiar face 4: Yeah, just kidding, anyway.. I got it, from monday on, I'll be stocking the shelfs at the supermarket, yeah!
Familiar face 1: And why do we need a new pressident anyway? What's wrong with the current one?
Familiar face 4: No comments.
Familiar face 3: Oh, the irony..
Familiar face 1: What irony?
Familiar face 3: No, nothing.
Familiar face 1: Whatever...
While in Germany I learned many valuable things, I learned that there's not only one solution to a problem, there are infinite. I learned to think outside the box, I learned to be resourceful, I learned to ask for help if I needed it. I learned to give and receive. I learned it's ok not to work or study. It's ok to be different. It's ok to be yourself.
And I learned something about myself that would help me understand my thoughts and manage my life a bit better. Regarding time perspective. I realized that my perception of time was totally different from other's. This is no news, we all perceive time on a slightly different way. But in my case it was a bit more than that.
I realized that one minute for me was like one hour for everyone else, one hour for me it's like one day in everyone else perspective. One day was like one week and the way I perceive a week in my life was similar to the way other people perceive one month in theirs.
And finally I understood that it was ok, to be that way.
That makes communication difficult sometimes, because if someone asks me, on a thursday, "what are you doing on the weekend?" I would think they are crazy because, from my point of view, the weekend was still lightyears away, so most times i would say that I didn't even know what i'm doing today.
And when they ask me what are you doing next week or next month I always think that i could die today or tomorrow, so somewhere along the way I had I lost the ability to plan ahead. I had lost that pressure that most people have to get things done or sorted out.
Was that good or bad? I found a few years latter it was good, because it was allowing me to live in the moment, enjoy the day while ridding myself of the responsibilities that come along when you try to control or influence the future.
Most people I met found it a bit difficult to understand that I didn't have any plan, no life goals, no job, no money, no career prospects, and nothing to accomplish whatsoever, I didn't know how long would I stay in germany, i didn't know where I was going after, I didn't know if I would ever go back to argentina, hell, i didn't even know what was going on on the weekend!
Yet i was hosting many couchsurfers from different countries, getting to spend time with them, I was meeting new people every day, got to hitchhike the way around more than 20 countries, got to learn german somehow, and got to meet people that would be my friends for life. Was having a great time, right here, right now, so I couldn't care less about not being able to answer those questions like "what do you do?" or "how long will you stay in germany?" I was like: who cares? I'm having a great time now! this is real, this is life.
I was lacking something though, it was all too easy and after some years, life in europe had become somehow predictable.
Germany didn't feel like home anymore, I had been roaming around different parts of europe for some months and I had lost myself somewhere along the way. Felt like there was something missing in my life, didn't really know what it was, but knew where to look for it. In Asia.
So in September 15th 2008, found myself on a plane towards Islamabad, but that's for next time.
