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February 9, 2022,
Wherever you go. Wherever you fly to and stay. Whatever you run to, there you are.
As well.
You can never escape you.
Even if you want to.
At one time, when American society was less accepting of alternative lifestyles, people left where ever they were from, traversed to San Francisco, to start over.
To start anew.
And not be hassled, harassed and scorned for who they are. While others could not accept them for who they are, the most important step for them to go forward was they accepted themselves for who they are.
Finally.
For those of us who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, we liked that concept and welcomed them with open arms.
They would meet new people who had similar interests and start a whole new life full of promise and acceptance.
That is one decision making process, we feel, that can be lauded. If you don’t like your situation, instead of feeling sorry for yourself or giving fuel to others to make your life miserable, do something about it.
Then, there is another situation.
At some point you realize it is time to leave wherever you are and pursue your dreams.
The primary destination of choice for that decision making process is often New York.
In terms of fashion and the arts, few cities can rival New York.
We laud that decision making process as well.
The above two examples are about endings and beginnings. Leaving where you were to start a new life elsewhere, mostly for enhancement reasons.
Then there is the third situation.
It is the third situation that we find a little troubling, because leaving doesn’t solve the problem, when in reality, you are the problem. Going someplace else, without working on who you are, only transfers your unbearable current location to a new one.
Some examples might help.
If you have extreme anger issues, sex addiction behavior, inability to bond tendencies, irresponsible patterns, self-destructive traits and the like, do you really believe moving to another city is going to change that?
What about money?
You can’t seem to save it or build anything for the future and often find yourself broke, asking friends and family for loans or you devolve into more serious financial constraints.
Do you really believe being nomadic is going to change that?
Simply put, before you leave anywhere, forever, for now, before you go, you need to work on who you are so you can transition into who you hope to be.
Before.
The epitome of the final example is the following independent film.
Lost Girls & Love Hotels is a 2020 American drama directed by William Olsson from a screenplay by Catherine Hanrahan, based on Hanrahan’s novel Lost Girls and Love Hotels.
The film stars Alexandra Daddario as an American English pronunciation teacher in Tokyo, who loses herself to the city’s nightlife and begins an affair with a member of the Yakuza. It was released through video on demand on September 18, 2020, by Astrakan Film AB.
Here is the storyline.
Margaret is an American expatriate living in Tokyo.
She works at a Japanese flight academy during the day teaching prospective flight attendants how to pronounce English. She spends her nights getting drunk with fellow expatriates Ines and Liam and seeks out submissive sexual encounters with random men in the city’s numerous love hotels. Her nightly misadventures cause her to show up to work in a daze and disheveled, drawing the concern of her instructor Nakamura.
One day, Margaret crosses paths with a Yakuza enforcer named Kazu and the two begin a relationship. Margaret is at first taken aback by Kazu’s revelation that he is about to get married, but she gives into him when he admits that his marriage is more out of duty than love.
Margaret confides to Kazu that she does not have a family: her father left when she was a child, her mother passed away from cancer, and she has a schizophrenic brother; and that she came to Japan to be alone.
On the day of graduation for Margaret’s students at the flight academy, Kazu asks Margaret to spend the entire day with him in Kyoto. Initially reluctant to skip her graduation responsibilities, Margaret agrees when he says he will not get another day and they take the train.
Very important, he brings her to the Kiyomizu-dera temple and shows her the “Buddha’s womb”, a stone illuminated at the end of a pitch-black tunnel. Kazu explains the symbolism of being reborn reaching the stone and brought Margaret there hoping to help her let go of her trauma, but Margaret seems unaffected.
On the train ride back to Tokyo, Kazu leaves the train while Margaret is asleep, leaving her despondent and desperate to find him when she wakes up. When she returns to work, she finds that she has been let go and replaced for skipping graduation.
The intriguing thing about this little gem is that we would not describe it, by our standards, as a great film, yet, in its simplicity it begged for strong analysis.
Why does she like being extremely submissive in sexual situations to the point of being injured?
Why is she getting drunk virtually every night?
As you can see, the storyline is loaded with questionable behavior that doesn’t get resolved.
Ever.
Margaret came to Japan to be alone.
A country with a population of almost 126,000,000 million people.
Okay. If that’s what you say.
What she really seems to be saying is that she came to Japan to escape the trauma of her past.
Not to be reminded of it.
Fair enough.
The problem with her decision making is that, while the location may be a factor, her delving into completely irresponsible behavior, whether it is to constantly have dangerous sex with strangers or continually get drunk or repeatedly showing up late to her job, whatever city she lives in, that will eventually ruin her life or kill her.
Here, while she and Kazu eventually reunite and have some positive closure on their own volatile relationship, Margaret makes a decision to take his advice, be reborn, and leave Japan.
Best wishes on that.
Wherever Margaret goes, there she is. Nothing is going to change that.
Being reborn is a good suggestion but how does she become reborn?
For example, in the organized religion we were once a part of, for over 20 years, being reborn meant studying the Bible, changing your previous behavior to conform to Bible principles and let it guide you into a new life.
Most times it actually worked for those who needed that change.
In Margaret’s case, even if temporary, we would view that as an upgrade.
Major.
At some point however, as we found out the hard way, you have to find the real source of your trauma and take steps to heal the wounds. It may be better to do it from an improved place where your self-destructive behavior has changed, but you still need to focus on the real trauma.
If your experience is like ours, daunting a task though it may be, you will find that you, yourself, caused or are the source of the trauma.
What may be hard to accept is that very few people in life can harm us that deeply. Otherwise they would most likely be in jail. Yes, traumatic events happen to virtually everyone but it is how they respond to that tragedy, without feeling sorry for themselves, appears to make all of the difference.
You have to keep looking within.
In the film. Margaret did not do that.
In the end, she is on the plane, and hope springs eternal, but in this situation, wherever she flies to, there she will be.
And her self-destructive behavior as a twin passenger shadowing her.
She can’t escape herself. None of us can.
Changing locations is not the solution.
Changing self is.
~ ~ ~
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Girls_%26_Love_Hotels
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