SITTING ON A BENCH in the rain, in front of one of my favorite cafés in Osaka, my home in Japan. I’m listening to some throwback Gus Dapperton; I’m also under a plant.

It would be cool to be other places right now, I don’t know, Cappadocia, maybe. But there’s really no place I’d rather be than right here on a Sunday afternoon, music in my ears, journal on my lap, watching life go by.

We want what we don’t have — the finish line, the clothes, the girl or guy or looks or money — whatever. Why? Because we think that would satisfy us; we think that would fill the emptiness; we need distraction from the present because the present’s rarely satisfying.

We rarely considering just how far we’ve fuckin’ come — that this moment was once the finish line we dreamed of crossing, that what we have is what someone else would literally die for, that the present is all there is and all there ever will be.

There’s something beautiful about the dissatisfaction, the longing to be more.

Consider what you are and where you’re at, here and now.

Look around.

Bask in this shit. It’s glorious, and it’s fleeting. I try to grab it and I can’t. It’s why I write — what I love is constantly out of my grasp. And I’m chasin’ what I think I love to the ends of the earth, runnin’ and runnin’ just to capture what it means to be here now — I look up, and I’m bobbin’ my head to a tune, and this dude either thinks I’m nodding or he’s just bobbin’ back and smiles, and I smile back.