This semester is almost over and I promise this time I will
give a proper end of year reflection.
There are many cool things I don’t want to forget.
Talking about forgetting, today when I was studying for my
Japanese test, I was listening to my liked videos on Youtube. For me, my liked videos is another history of
my life: what I was interested in at the time, who was I listening to, what my
mood was, etc. It was interesting to
listen to my past and think about the me that liked that video.
I finally got to the time that I watched City Hunter and I liked
some of the OST videos. A wave of nostalgia
hit me as I thought back on that show.
The thing is, I barely remember the plot; I can probably only say what a
normal summary could say. I only
remember how I felt about it, not what happened. I felt like I lost something. Sure they are fictional characters, but shows
are meant to be realistic so me forgetting their lives is like forgetting a
real person.
For me I deeply delve into things for a time
and then leave. That show was my
life for a week but now I can’t remember what happened in it. What about with friends then? My friends tell me personal stuff about them,
but just as quickly as I forget the shows I probably will forget their lives
too. It feels disrespectful to do that
after they put the energy in telling me these things, but I will not even
remember them.
I have seen these small bouts of dedication before. During PAVAN, a governor school
for the performing arts, guitar was my life for two weeks and I dedicated
myself to that. I practiced every day
and I worked hard for our performance.
After the program, I would practice less and sometimes not at all. The circumstances around me made me
dedicated, not anything inside of myself.
I worry the same thing will happen with me and
Japanese. It has been a defining part of
my college life, but without the environment would I even be doing it or would I
even want to do it? After I took the
JLPT, I didn’t touch Japanese for a bit to rest and I feel that was me breaking
my own fiction that I just need to keep doing Japanese no matter what.
I know I don’t need to worry now because if I study abroad I
will still be in the environment of studying Japanese, but what about 4th
year or after I graduate? Where will my
motivation come from? I wonder if most
of the things I do is because of environment and not because of my own
drive. When I’m not at UVA I interact
with people much less and when I’m vacationing I pretty much don’t interact
with others at all. UVA has the
environment of interacting with people and making friends that I wonder if I
can transfer my attitudes in this environment outside of UVA.
People say living in
the present is good and I think it is but when I realize things that I do like
this, I question how useful living only in the present is. As always I need to obtain more of a balance
of thinking about the past, present, and future.
