The Story Thus Far

Countdown to departure: 18 days
Countdown to culture shock: 203 days

The story thus far is that every day I wake up, my life gets more complicated. While walking home from work, I found the solution to a lot of the questions I've been asking myself in the same place I usually do (and yet it somehow always seems to surprise me) - I took a different route. With all of the things on my plate, it dawned on me on this particular walk (amid the smells of gravel and cherry trees) that I need to start laughing stuff off. When I first started studying Taoism, I jotted down these lines:

To learn a little about Tao
Take what I write into your heart
And laugh

To learn much about Tao
Take what I don't write into your heart
And laugh some more

And this is the thing. I can look at the things in my life and justly classify them as irksome, interesting, providential or all-too-typical, but unless "funny" is in that list, I'm not going to know peace. And frankly, it is funny that just when I thought I would have enough money to make all this work, I went and did a few hundred dollars of damage to my parents' car. It's funny that my visa application has gotten so wrapped up in red tape that I may have to rethink all of my plans. And it's certainly funny that worrying about these things has left me so scatterbrained that I tried to order a lunch special from a restaurant at 8:15 this evening, and then had to be reminded by the waiter to pay a tip when I left.

And I'm not being sarcastic in the least. Whatever comes of these plotlines, they'll bust a gut when I tell my grandchildren about them.

UPDATE: I think this is an apt illustration of what I've been thinking about.