Dear Gen:

Very perceptive of your writing classmate! I did notice your writing is well organized, rational. It makes me think of the conversation you had recently with your father. He was strictly rational about your career future: work is so to make money, the more the better, and to be happy: take care of it outside of work, if you must. This is a rational that many, if not most people share. Problem is he is not attending to the Gen-Factor in this conversation. He did not attend to your feelings and motivations, and instead he repeated the same position he had for ages. There was no back and forth communication about YOU. Neither did he tell you how he feels.

What happened in Japan, I believe, is that you went there alone, solo and … you didn’t want to go back home. You wrote that in your post.

You also wrote later: ” I have a really good relationship with all of my family members.”

There is a price you pay for those good relationships, and these relationships are your comfort zone. You felt alive and capable when you were away from these relationships, this comfort zone.

The price you pay is that you keep your dissociation from your emotions going so to please your father, for one. And you keep it going because you are not familiar with the alternative. The alternative is your experience in Japan.

Till your next post, I hope, take care!

anita