THIS PAST WEEKEND felt like the first breath of spring in Japan. I’ve been living here for over a year and a half. That amazes me. Still, it takes intention to see the magic in the world, for what was once a far-fetched dream has become my routine. Japan is home. It’s becoming more and more familiar. But I won’t let the magic fade.

This is my second spring living in Japan, the sakura 桜 (cherry blossom) season, when the landscape turns ethereal, warm, light.

Go back to when you just arrived in Japan for the very first time, I told myself last weekend when walking around central Osaka. Tap into the feeling of sheer wonder when, four years ago after fourteen hours, the plane coasted into a gleaming Tokyo, saturated in rain.

I took a breath and tried to feel it. I opened my eyes. The sun felt brilliant; the sky was vast and crystal blue. I kept walking and came across my first blossoming sakura tree of spring.

The sakura are faint pink like a pale dawn sky, delicate and omnipresent at this time of year. Parks and riverbanks teem with the iconic cherry blossoms, which only bloom for a couple of weeks in early spring.

While picnicking beneath the sakura is undoubtedly one of the most wonderful cultural experiences in Japan, known as ​hanami​, it’s the unexpected moments of awe I love most about this time.

Perhaps you’re getting groceries or running late on your way to catch the train. You’re caught ruminating inside your head while on a walk, blocking out anything but the thoughts which need unwinding. But then, you pass a sakura, poking through a wire fence. You step over a puddle, on which floats a dusting of fallen petals. For that moment, you forget about your troubles as beauty suddenly enters your life. And that’s when it hits me hardest:

I live in Japan. 

The sakura come and go, their evanescence affirming life’s nature of impermanence. Beauty, pain, chapters and seasons — it all comes in waves. We try to hold on, fighting the change. We struggle to solve every challenge. But much of life needn’t be solved. It can only be lived.

Where do the petals go when they fall? Where do we go? We carry on. The petals fall in the rain. I find them beautiful that way, for we can’t stop and capture them. Can’t ask them to stay. Like time, we can’t do anything but watch them go — but we can breathe, we can slow, we can see the life, the beauty, the magic before us before it’s carried away in the wind.

The elements of our world change, grow, breathe and die, just like us. We tell stories of these changes, identifying with the trees and the flowers and the sea and the moon, as their ever-shifting nature helps us carry on. They’re alive, and we are too, if only for a moment.

Trees bear fruit again and again at certain times of year; an unseen energy pulls the tides of the sea; the shadow of the moon shifts based on its position beyond our empty sky.

Yet all we see is a sliver of piercing light in never-ending darkness. We feel the moving waves and hear them crash. We’re caught unaware as we go about our day by the beauty of a budding pink flower. That’s when, if we open our eyes, we may realize that we’re part of something we can’t understand.

How did this all come to be? I often wonder. The color in rain, the beauty in the depths from which we overcome our pain, how cities breathe themselves.

When the sun goes down and the lights come on, I remember that there are countless cities out there with skylines that shimmer like stars. Cities full of people trying, like you and me. It gives me energy. Gives me hope. Fills me with an unwavering fire, an unquenchable desire to be here now, seeing life for what it truly is — fleeting — and beautiful because of it.

Cherish where you are on the way to where you’re going, or else all of life will pass you by. Even if it hurts, it takes more than just being alive to live. Another spring has come. I feel good; lighter. I got no clue how things are going to go — none of us do. I’m out in the world, and it’s not always easy, but shit, I’m happy, writing these words, figuring it out as I go.

Right now I feel connected — to my breath, my purpose, my people, my healing, my heart. Life is a trip I’m just happy to be on. I get caught up in the doing, yet the doing means nothing if we forget what it means to be.

I need to put everything aside sometimes and just hang out with friends. That’s what matters. That’s productive. Let go of keeping up with yourself, and kick it in a park. We need it more than we know. I’m building something that matters to me, but to what end? For freedom, the freedom to live the life I desire. But freedom isn’t something to one day acquire. It starts within.

I strive to be okay with just myself, finding joy, substance, in nothing but my thoughts. In fresh air, passing clouds, a cup of coffee, the long forgotten words in the page of a book — a fallen flower. If we can cultivate that inner strength and ease, it won’t matter what life presents, we’ll be okay. We’ll make it. We’re free.

I’m in awe of the people in my life I feel so close to, some whom I haven’t seen in person in a year or more, some I haven’t even met. I’m in awe of the people I’m lucky enough to call best friends, whom I spend an afternoon with and I feel home, in this city foreign to us all. But we’re on a team. All of us. A sea of souls building, creating, living with smiles and tears, adding color and depth and meaning to an often difficult world.

I’m in awe of the natural world which teaches me so much, giving me strength when I need it most. There’s nothing to capture, nothing to chase, nothing to be but here. It’s spring, a chance to marvel at the flowers, which soon will be no more.

Takeaways

Stop to smell the roses.

While walking this morning through my neighborhood in Osaka, coffee in hand and eager to get my day going, I passed beneath a blooming sakura. I noticed the fallen petals like a splash of pink paint along the sidewalk. I stopped in my tracks and looked up. The morning light hit the tree perfectly. I stood there in admiration.

A man was passing by and noticed how I’d stopped. He started speaking quickly in Japanese, saying I had to come check out these other sakura in front of the gate to the local high school. He walked me over to the trees (the Japanese often don’t just tell you where to go if you ask for help; they walk you there) giddy with excitement. It made my day.

Breathe

This has been very helpful to me lately. Yes, breathing is helpful to stay alive, but breathing purposefully. Deep breaths when my mind strays bring me back to now. I reconnect to my body. To the air. To my center. If life feels overwhelming, try this box-breathing exercise: Take a deep, four second breath, hold for four seconds at the top, four out, and four at the bottom.

Gratitude

Try writing what you’re grateful for first thing in the morning, especially if you’re going through a difficult time. I’m on the journey of healing from years of chronic back pain. But if I head out into town for a couple of hours, I’ll inevitably see people in conditions that tear at my heart. It makes me so incredibly grateful for what has in the past felt like a broken body. I have eyes that see. Legs that move. A mind that works. We can change our perspective, always seeing what we have as more than enough. Gratitude really is the answer, for it shifts our focus from what we want or what we’ve lost to what we have, right here before us.

Be where your feet are

This is a phrase I repeat to myself often. Are you talking to a friend, family member, or coworker, yet your mind is elsewhere? Be where your feet are, not in the future or the past, but at the table. On the walk. In the room. Stop thinking about what you’re going to say, and listen.

Silence

When I’m on the move, or really doing anything besides reading or writing, I’m usually listening to music or a podcast. It’s a lot of information constantly coming in. Lately, I’ve been going on walks and leaving my phone at home. It feels like a new world. I love listening to the sounds of the road, the birds, the ambient chatter. Our minds need a break. Try cleaning, or cooking, or running without music.

Spring cleaning

I’ve been decluttering my space, getting rid of things, freshening up. I love feeling lighter, but this has also helped me see my space. It fills me with so much joy; the memories accumulated in Osaka, the momentos and pictures and color. Some I say goodbye to, some I’ll hold on, but cleaning and asking what purpose our things serve is a valuable way to relate to the present.