Act II

Dear Self,

It bothers you, doesn't it - that your story doesn't have an ending. At least not yet, at least not ever. You keep hoping for the perfect little ending where something marvelous happens and we all live happily ever after. But in the stories, that's when you move on to another book, another character, another plot or just hope for a very well-written series. (Hardy Boys was SUCH a disappointment, wasn't it?)

And it bothers you too, to have loose plot lines. Last week you watched a movie with a character that you loved introduced early on and never reappeared - it frustrates you even now. Perhaps that is why you continually check your email hoping from some line from Isao or you drive around town looking into the face of every Japanese person you see hoping that it is that law student you met a few weeks back or continually attend every seminar you can to find that man you've dubbed as your "future husband". (笑) You keep searching for signs that the people that you easily learned to love and care for will reappear - that their lives will have been intricately tied into your own.

Not to mention those weird, unexplainable moments of your life. That time that you listened to a Chinese song over and over on your media player on your computer. It was beautiful and all you wanted was to find out the artist and the title only to discover that no such song existed anywhere on your computer. Or that short story that you spent a week working on only to find out that it disappeared completely.  If I was the author, shouldn't these events have to do with the ending in some elegant and masterful way?  Instead, I think they're gone forever.

And then, here's the kicker:  Here you are stumbling through the hardest period of your life (up to this point).  Past trials make for good stories with morals threading their way through every frustration.  But this one has no end in sight and you don't what events will transpire to get you through it or what sort of person will emerge.  Truly, this trial as no other is testing you as you've never been tested before.  Failure seems as likely - or possibly more likely - than success...


From the words of your friend, President Packer: 
"W e sometimes wonder, if the plan really is the great plan of happiness, why must we struggle to find fulness of it in mortal life? If you expect to find only ease and peace and bliss during Act II, you surely will be frustrated. You will understand little of what is going on and why it is permitted to be as they are. Remember this! The line “And they all lived happily ever after” is never written into the second act. That Line belongs in the third act when the mysteries are solved and everything is put right." (The Play and the Plan, May 1995)

Double rainbow, Utah 2009

加油！

Love,
Me