Life is a series of breakdowns, big and small

I love the smell of autumn in Asia. There's this very distinct smell in the morning when you walk out into the cool, crisp air - the best way I can describe it is the smell of burning leaves mixed with the morning mist. I smell it in the mornings in Tokyo, and it's exactly the same smell I remember from Seoul and it totally takes me back. It transports me back to Anyang, where I spent the summer between 7th and 8th grade playing with our dog, roaming around my neighborhood, swimming in the local pool and spent weekends waterskiing in Wee-do island. It was one of the happiest times of my youth and thinking back on it reminds me of the ache I feel when I think about my stepmom. She was such a big part of why that summer was so fun and carefree. It's been 14 years since she passed away from liver cancer and her absence still causes a faint ache in my soul.

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In Japan, when disposing of garbage you have to make some difficult decisions. At home, I have two garbage cans - one for combustible items and one for non-combustibles. In public areas, you often have to discern whether your piece of garbage is a bottle, can, paper, "other" combustible or "other" non-combustible. Obviously the first three are fairly easy to identify, but I always have a difficult time deciding whether an item is combustible or non-combustible. Technically, pretty much everything is combustible, no? I mean, you CAN burn it, it's just a question of whether you should or not. The item I deal with most often (and still haven't reached an answer) is the ubiquitous bento box, or other similar disposable food containers. I don't even know what the material is - the top is a clear plastic-y thing but the bottom is sometimes a styrofoam(like)-plastic hybrid. Is it combustible or not? Oh the dilemma.

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I'm going to see Beyonce perform live this weekend! I am so excited because I LOVE her and I love love love live music.

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We often hear about mid-life crises, but I think after elementary school, life is pretty much an ongoing series of crises. Junior high is one big crisis. High school is its own crisis. The decision of which college to go to, another crisis. College itself is pretty fun, but then you reach the crisis of what do with your life afterward. If you truly can't figure it out by then, or don't want to, you do what thousands of other people (including myself) do: apply to law school. Law school buys you three years of crisis-free living (at least it did for me). Then you face the crisis you've been putting off for three years: what to do with your life. More often than not, law students choose not to have to face the question and take the most obvious and easiest path (i.e. big money at big law). Then you face your quarter-life crisis. Then the turning 30 crisis. And of course, every break-up causes a pseudo-crisis. And though I haven't reached them yet, I presume life continues with crises, big and small, including turning 40 crisis, mid-life crisis, becoming a parent crisis, your kid reaching their teens crisis, becoming a grandparent crisis, realizing death is not far off crisis, etc.

Generally when faced with a crisis, I'm fairly proactive and take positive steps toward achieving one of my life goals. Most of the crises in my life have not been crises at all, but rather opportunities: there are many roads that can be taken, and after weighing the things I want out of life against the risks, I choose the road I'll take. Or often, the weighing of pros and cons, risks and opportunities isn't even necessary because deep down, my soul has always known the answer - it's simply a matter of listening to my soul and not fighting against it.

But this past year, I've been going through the biggest crisis I've ever faced. In fact, I think it's a merger of two separate but large crises, which merged to become a mega-crisis of monstrous proportions. Crisis #1: failure (i.e. layoff and the myriad issues related to it: looking for a new job, not having a source of income, feeling like a failure, not being in control of my life). Crisis #2: turning 30. I think turning 30, under any other condition, might not have been quite the crisis it turned out to be if everything else in my life was under control and going smoothly. After all, I think I've had a good run so far - I've done many of the things in life I set as a goal to do, traveled a ton, am blessed with amazing friends and family. To have all this at 30, under normal circumstances, is a success. But I had to deal with turning 30 while facing my biggest crisis ever - that thing called failure (and I'm not saying getting laid off IS a failure objectively, but that to me personally, it felt like a tremendous failure, and the first true failure I ever faced). And on the eve of turning 30, when you feel like you have failed and aren't in control of your life, it turns turning 30 into one big fat crisis.

And so I did something that I don't think I generally do. I started feeling sorry for myself. And the thing about self-pity is that it's poisonous. It eats away at all that is good around you - it eats away your happiness, it eats away your ability to see the positive side of things, it eats away your confidence, it eats away your sense of self, it eats away your relationships with the people you love. Because self-pity is toxic.

For almost all of 2009, I've been having a big fat pity party for myself - woe is me I got laid off, woe is me I can't find a job, woe is me I have to move abroad, woe is me I'm living abroad, woe is me I'm all alone, woe is me I'm turning 30, woe is me, woe is me, woe is me. And the thing is, when shit happens, it's hard for people to tell you to stop feeling sorry for yourself because they genuinely feel bad for you and think it's ok for you to feel bad for yourself. They try to do what they can to make you feel better and they think letting you do whatever you want might make you feel better, so they let you have your way and continue in your self-destructive self-pitying. And so, without anyone telling you that you are being ridiculously pathetic and should get over it, you continue in your self-pity.

And unfortunately for one person, not only did he have to put up with my months of self-pity and unraveling, he also had to endure my various breakdowns, which often times, I would turn into something about us or him or expect him to somehow fix my own problems, when really, it was about my own sense of failure and loss of control over my life.

It took an utter and complete breakdown and unraveling of myself, and nearly losing what matters most to me, for me to even realize that I'd been drowning myself in my own self-pity and in doing so, failing to enjoy life. To really truly enjoy life and realize that how life is is all a matter of how you view it is. I think of 2008 as the best year of my life even though I lost almost my entire life savings because I fell in love, traveled the world, and had the opportunity to spend tons of quality time with my friends and family while seeking my own happiness. And it's ironic that I think of 2009 as the worst year of my life when I've regained most of my life savings, fallen deeper in love, traveled the world, and had the opportunity to spend tons of quality time with my friends and family. I've been so blinded by my self-pity, rooting from my sense of failure and loss of control over my life, that I refuse to see how 2009 has been a year full of blessings.

But it's time for the pity party to stop. My breakdown and the potential repercussions of that breakdown finally woke me up to the true state of things. I can choose to drown in self-pity or I can seize the opportunities given to me and enjoy them. I'm living in Tokyo, one of the greatest and most unique cities in the world. I'm financially reaping the benefits of a strong yen and improving stock market, which I think will allow me to be free of all my private law school debt in a year and save my house. My friends and family are just a skype-call or plane ride away, and I'm making new friends which will one day become old friends. I'm learning a new language. It's ridiculous, really, that I was feeling sorry for myself in my situation. And so...I think with this revelation, my mega-crisis is officially over.

It's amazing how much clarity you have when you take the blinders of self-pity off. Suddenly I see.