What We Need

What is it that we need and how do we come by it?

Things are different here than in America.  Sometimes, when friends in America ask questions about Japan, they don't realize the freedoms to which they have become accustomed.  The ability to read and write, the ability to speak with anyone around you, the ability to join a community group or even create one.  They don't realize the comfort of being in a familiar space.  They have forgotten the years of learning acceptable behavior through awkward trial and error.  They don't recognize the privilege of adulthood to begin to make your own rules after the natural hazing of growing up.

I think I'm about 3 years old in Japan.  I can walk and want things and I've learned a bit about the world, but I could not survive without help.  But I once could, and sometimes that is frustrating.  It requires a relinquishing to give up certain rights and abilities that I once had.  I think it is a practice for the things that time will naturally and inevitably take from me one day.  Acceptance.

And in this new world, sometimes needs and their solutions transform into something different.  The need to read and write becomes the need to ask for help, the need to buy something at the store becomes the need to put aside pride.  The need to communicate with people becomes the need to find goodwill from a deeper place than words.

What is it that we need?  Sometimes it is something other than we thought.  Sometimes its answer must come from a different place.