What I Yearn For

In my younger days I had a wandering streak, touching down wherever the mood took me. Back then, knowing nothing to fear, my curiosity would swell and swell, and everything I saw and heard was fresh.

Now, though, I carry many responsibilities beyond my own, and I have shifted into a way of living where I act only after sorting out what I can and cannot do. “Oh well… so long as the experiences of those days are what give the present me a positive strength.”

Just as I was thinking such thoughts, I noticed that, at some point, murasaki-hanana (Chinese violet cress) had come into bloom in my garden—a flower that had never once bloomed there before. Most likely a seed rode the wind, touched down in the garden, and opened. That free, wind-entrusting way of a plant’s life is something the present me yearns for.