Climbing: A Fictional Narrative

 

This is a narrative inspired by my time in China, but it also captures many of the themes prevalent in my Tokyo adventures.  In my essay, I touch on the transformative power of direct experience, and this story chronicles the maturation of self-efficacy.  Though there is a certain amount of whimsy in this story, the Chinese guide really did slow down and make a walking stick for me when I had trouble climbing the mountain.  This was close social interaction, distinct from the scripted scenarios of buying food that I had so far experienced.

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I reach my arms above my head in an attempt to stretch, but am unable to raise them all the way up.  My bleary-eyed classmates shuffle around me in the predawn shadows, pulling on gloves and gathering extra water bottles.  A rooster bugles wearily as the skyline lightens above the Great Wall.

Knowing Tokyo through Narrative & Experience

Trapped in the suburbs, I spent my earlier years exploring the world through books. I drank in the ink, devouring the accounts of individual experiences, and savoring the common themes between them. Even my stream of consciousness became wordy, saturated with descriptions of my environment, eerily close observations of others, and fantasies of far away.  Today, the welcome challenge of new studies and responsibilities don’t always allow for such moment-by-moment narration and reading.  Literature remains at the core of my life, though, and like other people I still organize my memories and experiences in the form of narrative.  This was also the best mode through which I could familiarize myself with Tokyo before going abroad.  After all that reading and discussion, stomach knotted with nerves, I joined my class in a journey to Asia.  Surrounded in Tokyo by bright lights and oceans of people, experiences became my primary way of knowing, but narratives retained their importance.  Experiences serve as the building blocks of narratives, which conversely influence how we navigate, process, and react to experiences.