Let not each moment of awe be lost

To revisit a place to recreate or relive an experience does not seem to work all the time. This is proven true for me at least twice. One is at Tam Coc Vietnam and another at Mount Fuji which I recently visited.

My first visit to Kawaguchiko Japan a few years ago mesmerized me. I had then reached the hotel in the evening when everything was dark and misty even though the room had a mountain view. Waking up in the middle of the night when the mist had cleared, the first glimpse of  the silhouette of Mt Fuji with its unmistakable snow covered top awed me totally. In the stillness of the night it was magical, like a farmer's hat with a glowing white top. I was looking to be awed again during this recent trip.

This time round however we arrived in the afternoon with a clear view of the mountain. Though still exceedingly beautiful that magical awe that I longed for was absent. The following day a short hike led us to a gem of a spot by the lake with the mountain as a backdrop and a lone man fishing on a boat. There we rested absorbing the serene joy of early spring.

Included in the recent itinerary was the revisit of a zen temple at Kamakura. Fresh in my memory was a garden with a pond at the back of the temple where we had once sat alone admiring the zen ambience.  During the recent visit when we made our way to the back garden I was taken aback by the fully occupied  benches on the wooden balcony overlooking the pond. The crowd and the absence of the red leaves of autumn had failed to evoke the feeling of zen in me. Quite the contrary the bloom of the cherry blossom trees in front of the temple had sparked the freshness of spring.

Each moment has to be lived in its full intensity. Any form of expectation and wanting based on past memories will spoil it or reduce its awe. It is hard to relive any past experience totally because it is impossible to replicate the same set of conditions. Instead of magic and zen which I was expecting I experienced the freshness of spring.