It's been on my mind a lot lately. This goes a little deeper than "moving something from its natural environment", which has obviously happened to me.
Another kind of displacement came to mind as I entered my apartment's "furo", or bathtub.
I had left the tub running a bit long, so the bath was entirely filled with water. In Japan, you customarily shower sitting on a small bench (lower left corner) outside of the tub. Only after thoroughly cleaning yourself, leaving no soap suds at all, may you enter the tub.
I stepped in.
As I sat down, the water flooded over the edges of the tub and temporarily filled the room. As the steaming water swirled down the drain, I thought to myself, "this is the total amount of water that I have displaced". It was actually surprising how little water there was. In a 4 square meter room, the water only came up about 1.5 or so inches up the pale, green-tiled walls.
Have you ever had thoughts of your death that were neither morbid nor suicidal? When I'm at the edge of a cliff, I often wonder what would happen if I were to take a single step off the edge. I have also thought, "if I ceased to exist in this immediate moment, what would happen next?" Who would be the first to know?
I had a similar thought in my overflowing tub: not as exciting as the first, and not as selfish as the second. I simply thought, if my body was to liquify in this moment, turn instantly into bathwater, those 1.5 inches would be my entire being. Not only that, but it would effortlessly be carried by gravity and the city's pipe system to join with the rest of the water system, perhaps out to the sea, or eventually into the atmosphere.
It didn't seem right.
We displace more than the cubic volume that our bodies inhabit.
There are more than 3 dimensions.
Every day that we live on this planet, we are displacing space and time. We are altering the world around us in ways that we aren't even aware of. Simply by existing, you are changing the course of the world, whether you like it or not.
It's enough to give someone an inflated sense of self.
And yet, the question I had next was, how am I changing the world? I am only given a certain number of minutes to live on this planet. As long as 100 or so years may seem at first, it is a fixed amount of time. I can still only displace that 1.5 inches of water (or a little more if I take a deep breath in the bath).
These thoughts of displacement were a driving force bringing me here to Japan. How can my presence in this community change it? Can I possibly be proud of the change I affect?
There are some that travel abroad without thinking twice of the space in that foreign community that they are displacing. Whether you think of it or not, though, you are displacing that 1.5 inches, and it's not always appreciated.
This simple thought of displacement is helping me form my plans on a daily basis here in Japan. I'm not here simply to see the sights. I'm not here to simply have a good time. To sum it up, I'm here to change the world, and hopefully for the better. (See? I told you. Inflated sense of self.)
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| A fellow ALT Peter. Not me, but I jumped down this same waterfall... |
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How much water have you displaced in your life?
