an en

An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?


I am currently reading...eh em...listening to Memoirs of a Geisha and have found quite a few of Sayuri's views of life to be touching, thought provoking, and well...meaningful. Take the passage above for example. We always hear, and many of us use, the cliche of being touched by someone...in the metaphorical sense of course. But the visual of us being made of clay and that everyone we meet has placed at least a fingerprint upon us is quite powerful. Sayuri mentions that we now think that it is the choices we make that shape us...but couldn't it, very well, be a combination of the two? I have made plenty of choices in my life that have lead me to one place or another but it is the people I have met that have shaped my experiences. I would even go so far as to say that it is the people I have met who have shaped me...my personality, my future choices, my reactions to life's happenings, etc. Good or bad, I believe that the choices we make happen to be part of our destiny (another term used quite frequently in the book)...we will experience the same events and meet the same people along our given path but because of our choices, it is up to us to decide when these encounters will actually occur.

Speaking of destiny...

Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.
Again, it has to be our choices in life that help shape our destiny...maybe we won't always get the party...and what if it is a daily struggle?...but that just means we need to slightly change or rather make more careful decisions regarding our choices. On the other hand...sometimes the careful decisions are what's creating life's little difficulties. In that respect, maybe it is good to make decisions in a fly by the seat of your pants mode every once in a while...keep destiny on her toes :)

Back to the first passage where Sayuri mentions hope...
Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?
In life, I don't think it is ever about hiding your hopes but instead...as said by Dave Matthews in the song Ants Marching...Take these chances, place them in a box until a quieter time, lights down you up and die. It is your responsibility to remember your hopes and to bring them out of hiding when the chance presents itself. If it looks like the time will not come...make the time happen by changing your choices and therefore rerouting your destiny. It is only if you have forgotten your hopes and keep them locked away in a secret place that they will ever become lost.