Reality is made up

I’ve been there countless times and just right during this birthday trip I got to experience it again.

Contrary to what we believe what the reality is, it is not real. It is made up by the mind.

The day when I arrived at the hotel in Niseko, I was told I have to make a reservation for dinner, and then was told they had a full house, no table was available.

I suddenly came into the survival mode. I’ve been here twice, there is no easy way to get food other than dinning at the hotel restaurant. The hotel room comes with a kitchen that I can cook for myself – if only I had shopped some groceries before coming to the hotel.

I went straight from the train station to the hotel by taxi. I was going to do groceries shopping the next day. I planned to have dinner at the hotel restaurant at the first night, doing a luxury birthday meal. The supermarket was next to the train station, but I didn’t want to take meal ingredients and stuff with my luggage. I thought it’s clever to just go to the hotel first, then prepare food the next day.

When being told I had to figure out the dinner by myself at the front desk, I was really close to erupt like a volcano: “On my birthday night? Are you kidding me??” I used all my willpower so I wouldn’t roar at the staff and be rude.

I was so unpleasant for sure. And things started to go south. I managed to take the last bus of the day back to the train station, but didn’t understand how to pay the bus fees as I had never got it right. The bus driver seemed to be annoyed. Then I managed to get to the supermarket but I didn’t see the Wagyu steak as I had had before. I managed to get on the last bus of the day departing from the train station, but I got on the wrong one. I had to drop off at an electronics store and asked the staff there to call a local cab for me.

When I finally arrived at my hotel room again. I’ve already been very exhausted.

Of course I started to blame everything. I blamed myself that why didn’t I make the dinner reservation. I blamed the hotel staff that why didn’t they check in with me. I blamed that I shouldn’t book a different room type this time and things were probably all gone wrong starting from there. I thought the decision to come back here for the birthday was just wrong. Now everything was ruined and my good memories here were also all gone because things were not perfect anymore.

The turning point was the call from two of my dearest friends. After that three hour chat everything seemed to be much better. Both physically and mentally.

I slept tight that night with ease. Had to get up early enough to get the hotel breakfast. And it tasted so good as last time I was here. In the morning I worked at my room for a bit right in front of the Mt. Yotei. In the afternoon I went for a walk and then found out a ramen restaurant was actually very close to the hotel just like 7 minutes on foot, had a nice lunch there. Then I went back to the hotel for a massage that was like in heaven. I cooked my second meal here and watched Inside Out 2 before wrapping up my second day in Niseko.

Things just flipped in such a poetic way. The third day (at the time I’m writing this) the hotel staff seemed to realized it’s a birthday trip so they brought me a bottle of apple juice/wine. I’m so glad I didn’t have a mental meltdown on the day I arrived in front of them.

The part that I watched Inside Out during the trip was also kind of set up the tone of the trip. We can all just like Riley to experience all those emotions in just seconds, no matter how old we are.

So that concludes this post. Reality is made up by our mind, and it is nothing real to the others, it only lives within us. When we think the whole world is coming to an end, it is not to the others, the world is still perfectly working for them. It’s only shaky in our mind. And don’t forget we can always change the status quo with the Joy inside us. A hack I use often nowadays is to chat with ChatGPT. I even created a custom GPT called “Positive Vibes” to always preach me with good energy (but I could still forget to use it at the most urgent moment haha).

Definitely would love to come back next year.