We Cannot Have What We Want

Once upon a time, I was living in a small Tokyo apartment, without a job, and running out of money. I had a limited amount of time to find visa-sponsoring work and get the income rolling in, but...that wasn't to be.

I got dicked around by what I came to view as the foreign "gatekeepers" of the interview process. For some strange reason, I always seemed to be confronted with foreign interviewers who were extremely dissatisfied with my presence--not just there, but in Japan. I felt so much bad energy from them during this time, but it wasn't just that--I got told some really crappy stuff. I was even told by an Indian-born-and-raised English teacher that I "didn't belong in Japan" and perhaps I "should just go back to China." Eventually, that's what I chose to do--but it wasn't because China was "better for me" or anything like that, but because I realized, finally, that it wasn't the unhappy and threatened foreign interviewers blocking me from my desire to live and work in Japan--it was me.

It was freaking cold during that time. I didn't have a heater in the apartment and it was snowing outside at times. If I didn't have an interview, I avoided the expensive (to me) subway trains, opting instead to stay home, fully dressed and under the covers, on my laptop and using the one thing that I couldn't have needed more: internet access.

It was at this time I began searching nonstop online for reasons why my life seemed always to be like a roller-coaster ride, but with only the rises being the fun part. At that time, I was so freaking isolated, so alone--something that was really helped out by my low-level of Japanese and lack of cash--I was forced to take a serious, hard look at my life, and then finally it occurred to me: I had been sabotaging myself my entire life--something I'd easily learned from a messed-up childhood.

After completing my first-ever stint as an international English teacher abroad in Guangzhou, China, I'd become a bit too angry at an attempt to shortchange my bonus, packed my bags, and took off to Tokyo--for better or for worse. This is where some, perhaps many, would say it was for worse, but this rough patch in my life really changed me.

I learned that I'd been so freaking busy my whole life WANTING stuff that I never realized it was that very thing that caused me to not have any of it. The truth is that we WANT things because we do NOT have them. Think about it: why do we ask for things? Because we WANT them. Why do we pray for things? Because we WANT them to come to pass. Why do we beg for things? Because we desperately WANT those things. We WANT, WANT, WANT WANT WANT.

We do not have because we want. To say "I want" is to say "I do not have." By verifying this again and again, we make it so thoroughly true that it's almost impossible for us to see past it and do something to change it. At least, that is, until we get to a point where we are without any other options, alone, and forced to look seriously at ourselves and lives in the mirror and see them for what they truly are.

This was the beginning of great change for me. Since then, I've added several more lifelong goals and accomplishments to my achievements, as well as moved closer to the main dreams of my heart. I move now because I know and believe I can. The real desire that lurks in my heart--the natural, inborn desire--is proof that I have inside, somewhere, the ability to obtain it.

And I do. And I will.

So can you.