Nostalgia For A Feeling I've Never Known

Amagasaki today: sunny, golden morning and snowy, white afternoon. Never would this happen in Los Angeles. It's snowing outside and I can't help but watch it in awe. It falls so softly as it floats towards the ground. So gentle, but menacing with dangerous potential... like a gentle breeze just before it turns into strong wind. Luckily, it won't snow past tonight here. It's fickle snow and I don't mind that. Snow... what a small pleasure you are to watch. You're a perfect example of the novelties that make traveling exciting and separation from home bearable.

Beyond it's sheer beauty, I like watching snow fall, because it reminds me of something I've never known. Lots of sunshine, lazy fog, occasional wind and rain: my life for twenty years. Thus, living in this experience, in this precise moment, makes me wonder what life would have been like if I had grown up in a winter wonderland. What's it really like to experience snow? I'll never be able to tell you. Instead, I have my memories of tanning and sunburn...year round. And just to think that other people have never experienced sunshine the way I have, makes me feel nostalgic for memories that by chance became mine. And the fact that they are mine, and not someone else's, makes me feel a hint of loss for memories of snow that I'll never have, because if I had been born elsewhere, they could have been mine.

I can watch the snow fall, and if I choose, I can go outside to enhance the experience with all of my senses. I can successfully mimic what others experience regularly. It can feel so real in the moment, but it's a rare and fleeting occasion. I can only imagine what a complete experience of growing up with snow feels like. It's like applying theory to practice. Or comparable to the word that sits on the tip of your tongue, but you can't articulate. You can taste it, but you can't feel the texture. All together, it feels like the defining moment when you know enough to realize that there's so much you don't know. And yet, you're comforted by the immensity of the void, because you realize that not knowing everything means infinite opportunity to learn. Exciting! Snow!

I may not know the entire feeling of snow, but I can stand next to those who see it every winter, and we can both observe how it covers the trees, plants and buildings in a layer of white. I'll timidly admire it from behind the window, and maybe they'll choose to twirl underneath it, but we'll both gasp at its beauty. And I'll wonder what it feels like to see snow every winter. But when the seasons change, maybe they'll wonder what it's like to have sunshine all year long. And I can tell them all about it, but they'll never be able to feel the exact nostalgia they detect in my voice.

I'm feeling nostalgic on this snowy day, nostalgia for a feeling I've never known.