FDR in Japan

This afternoon I headed back to the river, this time with a different set of characters on the opposite river bank.  I watched as a group of teenage boys alternated between a game of makeshift baseball and a shooting game involving fake guns.  They ran through the low shrubbery and gravel, pointing their guns at one another and I became aware of a feeling of alarm inside of me as I observed this incongruous activity.  People don't have guns in Japan, there is no right to arms and gun crime is practically nonexistent.  One of the Japanese members of the orchestra has said that she is afraid to go to America for fear of being shot.

I understand.  I've gotten so used to the safety of Japan, where all forms of crime are quite low.  But I'm not afraid of being shot in America.  Perhaps I've become acquainted with the dull murmur of fear that such an event could happen.  I'm more afraid of earthquakes in Japan, something that doesn't seem to faze the Japanese.   They've become acquainted with this looming possibility in the same way I've apparently become accustomed to the presence of guns in my culture.

Fear is such a strange thing, hard to quantify and hard to qualify.  There are these outside fears, that seem reasonable to some extent, but obviously it becomes possible to manage them over time.  Are they really reasonable in the first place?  Perhaps this fear reflects more our distrust of those around us or our distrust of the certainty of even mere seconds into the future.  Someone could shoot us, the earth could give way.  So if we can manage them and temper our emotional statistical reading of our world, how much of fear is externally influenced and how much can we internally control it?

Since coming here, I'm aware of my fear of infringing on the space of others, of offending them, of being disrespectful.  And yet we all take up space – sometimes we have to bike or swim around someone, sometimes we bump into another person at the grocery store, or have to wait in line.  Perhaps I'm just nudging my way in and hoping that people can move over enough to let me sit next to them.  I think that these fears are not founded in an external place but reflect something inside of me that I'm exploring.  I'm encouraged by the friendliness of those that I regularly meet by the river or at the swimming pool.  And I'm strengthened in my own endeavors to learn the language of those around me and to step out of my comfort zone when I do in fact know how to ask where the seaweed is in the grocery store.

It can be hard to recognize that something is a source of fear.  Of all the external causes to which we can point our finger, most likely there is an internal correlate that needs our attention to help dissolve the dangers and threats of the world and its people.  Maybe we are afraid of losing something, or being lonely.  Maybe we are afraid of rejection from another person or perhaps even from ourselves.  And how does this make us act?  Do we shy away, do we put up our fists?  What do we do in the face of fear that we recognize?  Or of fear that we have yet to discover or acknowledge?  How does this effect the way that we treat other people?  How does it effect our control of our decisions and actions?