What I Started This Year

As I’ve mentioned briefly before, since the beginning of this year, I’ve made it a point to visit my ancestors’ graves once a month. I’ve already been this month, so that makes about ten visits so far this year. By the way, the car I use for these trips is my Volkswagen Golf. The roads leading to the graves are quite narrow and tight, so there’s no way I could take the Panamera there.

Every time I get into the Golf, I’m impressed by its performance to the point where I think, “What a great car… maybe I don’t even need the Panamera if I have this.” However, after test driving the new Cayenne in September and being amazed by its ride comfort and driving experience, I started to feel “Wait, was the Golf’s ride always this rough?” whenever I got behind the wheel.

The new Cayenne was just too good… Even though the Golf is a fantastic car, it’s a bit bittersweet to realize I might always feel this way from now on.

Visiting Both Families’ Graves

Back to the topic of visiting graves. Interestingly, my father and my husband both happen to come from the same rural town. I met my husband in Osaka through work, and I was really surprised when he told me where he was from. Even more surprising was that their families knew each other well enough to say things like “Oh, that’s so-and-so, I know them”, and they even share the same Buddhist temple affiliation. Because of this, my paternal family’s graves and my husband’s ancestors’ graves are just a stone’s throw apart.

Despite this, I had neglected visiting our ancestors’ graves for a long time. It’s a rural area with no train service and a 90-minute drive one way, but I think the main reason was that I didn’t really have a strong feeling of “respecting my ancestors.”

On the other hand, my husband, while not visiting every month, deeply values our ancestors and takes pride in his roots. Watching his attitude gradually changed my own feelings, and this year I decided to visit both families’ graves monthly.

Strangely, every time we visit, no matter how hard it’s raining (for some reason, it often rains), the moment we arrive at the graves, the rain stops completely. Despite being famously a rain and fog magnet, I find it amazing that the rain always stops. On one occasion, as soon as we lit candles and incense at my husband’s family grave, the candle flared up fiercely and melted away almost instantly.

It might have been a faulty candle, but it felt like a warm welcome from our ancestors, and gradually, visiting the graves became something I looked forward to.

When I put my hands together in front of the graves, I always think:

It’s a miracle that I exist here and now in this place.

If even one of the ancestors resting here were missing—if my grandfather hadn’t married my grandmother, if my great-grandparents hadn’t met, or if any one of my ancestors had made a different choice—I wouldn’t be here today. I realize that I’m not living by my own power alone; I’m here now because I’ve inherited the baton of life.

Luck Is Turning Around

I’ve always had decent luck when it really counted, and despite many challenges, I’ve made it this far alive. But since I started visiting the graves, I feel like my luck has been improving. The big flow of my life seems to have shifted over the past few months… as if a great force is carrying me to the next stage.

I’ve also noticed a change in my mindset. I’ve come to think, “Instead of focusing on what I don’t have, I should really appreciate what I do have.” I’ve understood this intellectually for a long time, but emotionally I hadn’t been able to embrace it. I think I had become stubborn because I couldn’t get what I wanted most.

Being naturally stubborn and not good at relying on others, I tend to want to handle things myself. I was afraid that if I accepted my current situation too easily, I’d lose myself.

But I realized that as long as I focus on those fears, I’ll never be happy.

Life is never 100% perfect; something is always missing. It will probably always be that way. That’s why it’s so important to truly appreciate what you have now, because happiness exists right there. The key is whether you can recognize it.

It’s not just because of visiting the graves; I think it’s a combination of my experiences, circumstances, and timing that have brought me to this feeling. But when I put my hands together in front of the graves, my weird pride disappears, and I feel I can honestly accept my situation as it is.

I hope to keep visiting the graves every month, and continue writing this blog with gratitude for being able to drive a Porsche in my life today (laughs).