JDMS
Academic Workhorse
My past life was obviously in Asia or something because ever since young I thought something was extremely fishy about America. I was probably Chinese or Vietnamese, maybe even Japanese. The spirits of those countries seem so much more welcoming to me than the ones here in Florida now. It is distressing to feel like a foreigner in America now despite having been here my entire life, but mindfulness and other things help. I tried to leave and go back before but it's not in the cards for me. I have to die in this strange country.
I'm actually sorry for coming back to this post, but at the same time, I feel the need to actually explain why I feel prickly about this post.
You come in and say "how has reincarnation affected you", and then say how you feel like a foreigner in your own country. You say you feel westerners are strange, despite being one yourself. Then you (seemingly) romanticize several Asian countries.
Yet, have you considered how this might come across to people from those very same countries that are actually affected by racism? Have you considered that we are literally living in a foreign country, surrounded by people that don't look like us. That we struggle to find groceries to make our own food? That we have next to no religious sites for a tradition that is engrained into our holiday culture? Etc etc?
You say you feel like a foreigner, but you don't even know the meaning of the word. You cry over a past life, and I'm upset over my current one. You have to "die in this strange country", but I have to live in it. These are not the same, and that is why I feel prickly about this post.
I encounter people your age that are obsessed with Japan on a daily basis because of anime and such, and now I either experience racism or fetishization everywhere I turn. So perhaps this post rubbed a sore spot.