It's odd how the act of traveling can make you remember things so much more vividly. Just sitting in the plane to Japan I remembered vividly my last cycling trip, and the many before it. My memories seem to more strongly associated with places than with people. Maybe that's because the people end up migrating elsewhere? Or maybe it's because people change more rapidly over time than places do? With places I focus on similarities compared to the past, whereas with people I can't help but notice their differences.
Next year it will have been 10 years since I first went to Japan and changed my life forever. It's when I made the most severe mental change in my whole life so far. There have been many small, incremental improvements to 'the concept of me' over time, but Japan was definitely a version 2.0. Hopefully there weren't too many regressions.. I need a testing framework for my personality..
I'm currently sitting in the domestic terminal of Narita, waiting for a flight to Naha. It's been a long time since I've been there, yet it feels like going back to somewhere familiar and safe. It's not quite like feeling at home, yet close to it. It's more like a feeling of unguardedness and a ridiculously high (over)confidence that nothing bad can happen, or at least that I'm prepared for all bad things that might happen. Just like every other time I went to Japan in the last 7 years, that feeling starts right after I board the plane at Heathrow or Amsterdam. It's not an end-goal kind of feeling -the feeling alone is not enough to satisfy the mind- but it provides a foundation from which to start doing more extreme things. The only other place I've ever been to that felt the same was the Seychelles.
No goal for this blogpost, except perhaps to collect a few loose thoughts before the year ends. I'm still learning how to act my age; my mental age seems to age less fast than my physical age. But I feel that I'm catching up. And the more I catch up, the more clear my future life decisions become. 2014 was a fantastic year. 2015 will be even better. There are still countless achievements in life left to be unlocked.