Chosen

A friend told me once that often books choose you instead of you choosing books. When Scott and I had a child-less weekend in Canmore, we spent a few delightful hours in a packed-full used book store. As we were walking out of the store, a book with a map of Japan on the cover caught my eyes. ”Four Pairs of Boots”. As we flipped through the book, we discovered that a man from New Zealand spent 99 days walking across Japan (from the southern tip all the way to the northern end) in search of “real Japan”. Scott and I have been sharing the book back and forth. Definitely not a best seller, but a fun book. It was interesting though that when I was reading it, I got this familiar feeling. I was trying to explain it to some friends. ”You know, when you haven’t been back in your home town in years. you go back and visit places where you played as a kid, and this familiar feeling washes over you….I’m not talking just about the emotional feeling but the physical feeling….this book gave me that feeling”. Everyone seemed to understand this ‘feeling’ I was talking about. I haven’t gone back to Japan in over 15 years. To be honest, I don’t miss it at all. But this feeling was a much welcomed one.