Tomorrow a 3-person contingent of American and Japanese businessmen will be visiting work, and I'll join them for the tour, lunch out at the golf course restaurant, and a meeting to discuss working together. I wish I hadn't forgotten so much of the Japanese I'd learned - but at least I've bought gifts that I can wrap up for them, and at least one of my suits fits me without looking too dowdy.
I can't wait to start running again. Last night I dreamt that I was running a half marathon, and when I reached the 13 mile mark, I just kept going. I decided I felt so good, I might as well try for a full marathon. I reached 20 miles and still felt great, then found out or remembered that there was no finish line for a marathon distance. And so I turned around and headed back, believing it was better to have an official way to mark what I had done, a recorded time, and to enjoy the recognition of the crowd, than to have run far and well alone and have no public way to measure what I'd accomplished. As I write this, I realize how telling it sounds.
I think of myself as a loner daring to be different (see previous self-confessed geek posts). And yet, I am bound by a sense of doing things decently and in order, following the Presbyterian tradition. Does my dream mean that I am afraid to go it alone in life, even when I have the strength, potentially, to do so? Or does it mean that I recognize that no man is an island and that I am after all a part of society, of a larger organism? Probably the former, although there wasn't so much a sense of fear in my dream as there was a light sprinkling of both anxiety and dread.
I must remember how strong I felt leaving the official race course behind and finding my own trail.
And I must remember how to say, "Nice to meet you," in Japanese.
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