Thinking Back What’s Changed Since My Last Trip to Japan

I wrote about Japan in my post yesterday. It’s been fun to return six years after our first trip here. Those six years feel like they’ve gone by quickly. At that time my main focus was on trying to find a way to make a living that would allow me to travel. Being in Japan was part of a bigger series of travels around Asia. We left Japan, went to Taiwan, then Korea before returning back to Canada.

When we left Japan six years ago we didn’t have a plan for where we’d go in the fall, but the idea of going to Mexico was starting to come up in conversation. It’s interesting looking back on that experience because in some ways I don’t immediately feel like I’ve changed a ton in that time, but life has changed a lot. I do think I’ve changed a lot as well. Grown-up and found lots of experiences that have helped me learn new things.

We ended up deciding to go check out Mexico City in the fall of 2017 and immediately loved it. We stayed for many months more than originally planned and started to explore different cities and states of Mexico. Little by little we discovered how much we liked Mexico and this past year our daughter was born in Mexico. It is the place that has become our home.

Being here in Japan and looking back on where I thought I was going and the things that I was focused on in 2017 make me think about what unexpected things the future holds now. Will we still live in the same country? What will my family look like in 6 years time? What will my career look like?

There isn’t a clear point to this post, other than it’s interesting to get yourself back into your perspective from years ago, to think about how you viewed the future at that time, and see how your true path looked nothing like you thought it would.

Day to day we hold on to so much tension trying to predict and control the future. Wondering if this or that will happen, striving for things, stressing about plans not working out. When you look back at the years of your life though and see how important things happen, how good things come into your life unexpectedly, and how bad things are overcome with time, it motivates me to try and relax about the day-to-day stuff.