A LONG WAY BACK, FROM FORWARD

By Ethan Ingle

Self-reflection can sound like pablum. (Self-help books?) A true sense of self, however, allows an emotional return on that self-investment – including the awareness necessary when a moment of clarity presents itself.

I have lived most of my life feeling as if I have no true home. So much of my childhood I was made to feel different. As a child, nothing is worse than being different. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words only lead to therapy. Being half Korean and half White was already different enough to secure my label as an outsider. I took it upon myself to embrace this role. If I were to be an outsider, I was going to be the best at everything. Whatever I did later became my identifier, not my genetic make-up. If I was always doing, I was never being. Never being my true self. Becoming invisible. This was the beginning of the mountain I was destined to climb. 

A chorus of pouring rain punctuated by focused breaths. I stood there floating on an island of stone, facing the heavens. Eyes closed. Revealing the emotions, I had longed to find. With every drop stripping away what had been – and returning what will be. The sense of belonging swelled within me. All versions of myself collided when I opened my eyes to the skies of Japan. To get to this point in my story was a transformative journey. A journey I highly recommend.

Photos by Ethan Ingle

Our public personas help us to navigate relationships and perceptions. While all these versions of ourselves can feel real, they are usually superficial fabrications. We dilute ourselves to be more palatable - more relatable. We carefully craft these personas to allow ourselves to blend in, if not to fully fit in. Like a performer donning a costume, we wear that fabrication like an affectation, but the only one we are fooling is ourselves. This charade causes us to be further and further from the truth of who we are. 

Something I tell people when they have lost their way that they are the sum of all their experiences in life: Good, bad…, doesn’t matter. Take your fingerprint as a metaphor. Notice the ridges, the unique patterns? Those are formed by what you touch within your mother’s womb. They are a physical presentation of your unique experience. Without your fingerprints, you couldn’t interact with this world. 

Too bad I didn’t take my own advice then. It’s one of those ‘benefit of experience’ moments, as they say. 

Crafting versions of myself is common – it’s even self-preservation. Being this disconnected from my true self naturally leads to a darker, ultimately avoidable, place. The darker side of that self-reflection can be a hard place to shed. When I left, it reminded me of a fog lifting. This natural aversion inhibited my risk taking - my potential advancements, at least emotionally. Allowing ourselves to become spectators of our own lives? No thanks. Not yet.

As positive as we may be, obstacles beyond our control will perpetually occur. I had found myself deeper into a rut trying to dig myself out. I became a workaholic, overworking myself. Looking (hoping?) to disrupt the ripples of life, I bought a ticket with the intention of climbing the symbol of Japan, Mount Fuji.

“Japan, specifically the region near Mt Fuji, is a place where the only way to do something is to do it well.”

The next ripple/obstacle? Heat. And humidity. The August heat and humidity in the Japanese archipelago is enough to make you wonder if clothes are only worn to soak up gallons of sweat. After a few weeks of walking – sometimes 17 miles in a day – the familiar fog of depression fell farther and, yes, further away. I was in a place that over centuries created a harmonious balance of nature and society. Japan, as it turns out, could be explored on my own two hippo -shaped feet. I could enjoy the smells of hand-made dumplings, see the weathered fingertips crafting shrines from traditional joinery, hear the splashing of a crystal-clear stream as it nourishes the world around it, and taste all of this culture concentrated into a single drop of golden whisky.

Japan, specifically the region near Mt Fuji, is a place where the only way to do something is to do it well. It’s ingrained in every facet of this ancient society. There are birds calling out at train platforms to let the visually impaired know they have made it to the stairs – as they have for decades, if not centuries.

Japanese eateries have garnered the most Michelin stars of any country in the world. Even the bullet train is made by hand. (Don’t let the Brad Pitt cinematic vehicle fool you.); I know this because I met the man supervising the teams who were working the rails. Given their precision, I thought, they must have been machine made. So, I asked him how they were so precise, and he said it was because you can only get that level of perfection through the experience of a passionate craftsman. 

This attention to detail is lacking in American mass transit (if not in most cases). America focuses on the results rather than the process. Americans, almost by definition, robs itself of the experience of the journey. The place where strength is gained, pain is felt, joy is shared. It’s where we grow. That’s the story. Not the “happily ever after”, but what you went through to get to that line. 

Given the cultural acclimatizing, and the hours spent, I was several thousand meters into the climb toward the summit of Mt Fuji. The sweat-soaked clothes are now a distant memory – rain-soaked socks quickly replacing those wet clothes. Temps hovered in the low 40s. Like pilgrims seeking enlightenment, our line pushed onward and upward, our headlamps glowing in the rain while cloaking the vast darkness of the pre-dawn sky.

I push on as oxygen becomes scarce with each footfall. Fellow hikers fell away from the path to the summit, each hoping for oxygen to fill their lungs. There was intense burning in my thighs and lungs as these critical muscles fought to fill with enough oxygen to carry me higher. I could feel myself slowing. Gravity is not our friend on this, or any, sincere climb. Weakening. Letting go. Each foot fall feels like a mile – a mile up or a mile forward, my muscles didn’t discern. I was fighting to reach the top. To see the sunrise. I needed this sunrise. I didn’t come this far to not experience it.

Placing one foot in front of the other – and with each breath I told myself, “Each step takes you one step closer; each breath will carry you”. Like the little engine that could, I focused on the steps of the path and pushed even harder. Both metaphorically and physically, the rain and winds push against me. When I look up, I am one of the first to reach the peak – even though I was the last to leave the camp, halfway up the climb.

All this self-reflection and metaphorical angst? Utterly worth it. I knew I’d see the sunrise from the highest point in Japan. Greeting (enjoying?) this a new version of myself., I found a small ledge on the side of the final building that oversaw the summit. There was just enough roof coverage to have the sheets of rain pass by some of my exhausted body. Soaked. Shivering. Silent. I sat there excitedly content knowing what the final lines of this journey would be. 

Hours passed. The rain, however, did not relent. Blackness turned to morning gray. Then gray turned to white. Fog again? Now? Blocking my “sunrise moment”?! Still, that moment of reflection resonates still - prevailing weather conditions notwithstanding.

“The sky a blue that could only be described as unimaginable.”

I began my descent, though saddened by what I had experienced at the top. Existential thoughts, if not some dread, seeps into my mind as I descend the mountain. As this cacophony of thoughts enter my consciousness, I lift my head and saw a cloud break revealing the height of my experience. The sky a blue that could only be described as unimaginable. 

Scaling over the rocky features of Mt. Fuji is connecting me to the earth and the sky – somehow, it’s simultaneous. Even before I reach level ground, my mind begins to form the sentences I’ll later use to tell my friends about this experience. The preparation, the anticipation, the anxiety and, yes, the climbing manifest into precisely what it needs to be: an experience that provides, but somehow asks for more.

No worthy journey ends. Not emotionally. We continue to recall them with every second of our subsequent existence. Travel memories recur at odd, opportune times. Recently, I have slipped off my waterlogged glove and looked at my fingers. Tiny water droplets have collected and settled on the ridges of my experiences … my fingerprints. 

Those fingerprints help me recall the versions of myself – the versions of my experiences.  I climbed the mountain I had built and returned whole from the long way back to me.