IT’S A HAZY NIGHT in Tokyo. Soft rain falling. The road smells like grilling meat; incandescent neon lights illuminate the sky.

I’m walking to the laundromat, a task I find it hard to imagine would excite many. But it excites me. I plan to write.

I love that writing can be done anywhere at anytime. These stories I share seldom come to me all at once. They’re constructed with bricks of ideas, words, lessons; spanning days, weeks, months.

Yet when complete, the whole says something about now. The feeling of now. The color and aura of now. The smell and sound. All writing is, is delving into now.

It doesn’t matter what now is. Now might hurt. Now might shine. Whatever it is, writing asks I be there, I open my eyes, and I listen.

The coin washing machine swashes and thunks repeatedly in a mesmerizing swirl beside me.

Outside the door, color fades as darkness falls. It’s wild how this makes me happy; I’m alone in a laundromat on the outskirts of Tokyo.

I’m alone in a laundromat on the outskirts of Tokyo.

How many others can say the same? Hundreds, perhaps thousands? And what are they all doing?

Reading, scrolling, thinking about the future or the past. Perhaps another soul, too, writes a story of what they see. Perhaps somebody’s sitting in the laundromat working on their novel, their business, their dream.

It might be miles and miles away or a few blocks down; they’re locked into their own little universe, just as I’m swimming through mine.

In the grand scheme of things neither of us matters much. Here, I’m nothing but a drop in the sea of color, light and sound.

But I’d rather be a drop in a never-ending sea than a big fish in a small pond, substantial and beautiful with nowhere to swim. I long to be a drop with direction. Small.

Striving to find — to create — my own meaning in life by floating through a roaring sea. Boundless.

You can be a drop but that’s all you need to be, for a city is nothing but people, a sea nothing but raindrops, each a soul, each beautiful, each with the potential to make a difference in the world.

So make your difference; work on your craft; go deep within the drop that is you. You never know the wave a drop in the sea may inspire.