There are times when it’s like in the movie Moonstruck when Cher’s character tells this guy to “snap out of it” and when a girl from Japan did the same for me.
We’re so caught up in the moment of just living that we seem to be oblivious to what we are meant to be doing. When I wrote the entry below, we had been in Florida for about three months and were in London for a Sherl Crow concert. 
Marie had won two tickets for a trip to London and the concert. I was still trying to let go of what had occurred in Fall River that had meant I had lost my job, and we had moved to Boynton Beach.
Sunrise on Boynton Beach
The story below came to me at about three in the morning while we were in London. I got up went into another room and wrote down the dream.
Back in July 1995, and over the next thirty years until now in 2025, I’ve encountered dozens of people, mostly in China, who seemed to be guides leading me to the next step in my journey. Often, I’d meet someone who would introduce me to another person, and they would move on. The person they introduced me to always turned out to be the one I was meant to connect with at that particular moment. My travels in China always seemed to be guided by spirit and what would be the next step. When I wrote this entry below it would be another two years before I went to China, and another two years later before going to Qufu for the first time. 
The entry serves to convey that there are times when we need a jolt to illustrate or show that we are not who we may think we are or where we need to be. The local paper made me look in the worst possible way before I left the city.
When we moved to Fall River, I thought we had moved to the area my grandparents settled after moving to America from Italy in 1908. Where my father grew up in South Dartmouth before joining the army in 1925. Fall River was only about twelve miles from their homestead, and I thought I was where I was supposed to be. But I was wrong. We moved to Fall River in 1988 and I became the Senior Planner before moving up to become the City Planner a few years later. We bought a house up in the Highlands and we were making a major renovation to the house. I also started growing perennials and had a large garden. I became a Master Gardener in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
My aunt and uncle lived in New Bedford, and I thought that I was where I was supposed to be but events beyond my control changed that and I left the city six years later in 1994. I had gotten an intern from Japan…
It was hard but I learned two very valuable lessons if not more. First the value of a good attorney, and that my writing had shown me that “it’s not where you are it’s who you are” that endeavor and destiny would first take me to Florida and Boynton Beach before pivoting to China.
There’s a lot more to this story. The entry below tells it pretty well. Needless to say, I was happy to now be in Florida.
My travels with Lieh Tzu / Interpolations along the Way
Chapter Seven – Yang Chu
114. Living in the Light because it sets us free
Suddenly awakened at three in the morning in London she is in my head to say that she is sorry. Looking for me, the dragons had shown her the way. What could she say except that she was sorry for what had happened and the events that led to my embarrassment and losing it all.
She was sorry that she had allowed herself to be caught up in politics and had allowed others to use her to destroy me. It had been like a roller coaster careening downhill a hundred miles an hour, once everything started there was no looking back.
She said she was most afraid of what happened due to our meeting. As if fate had brought us together. As if she and I were destined to come together. That she now knew that she was tied to me in a way that she could not then understand. She now knew her coming was meant to help awaken my spirit to destinations that neither she nor I could then understand. That the awakening of my spirit had frightened her. That she felt she was being used in a way that she could not then understand. That it only appeared as if the conspirators who wanted you to lose this meaningless job were driving this mean thing that happened to you.
I came at your request. I stayed in your house at your request. However, I was sent at the request of the dragons who were the ones using me. 
I was but the messenger but did not know myself. I was sent to help set you free. Your place is where you now travel, to places they can only know. It was only when you lost everything as to who you thought you were that you could begin your journey. 
Please find it in your heart to forgive me as I was only sent to set you free. Our spirits have roamed the universe for an eternity as we continue to meet over and over again. You’re asking me to come to you was your fate and was destined to occur if you were to awaken during this lifetime. Look where you now travel and ask yourself if you could ever go back.
My coming while you are now in London is no mistake as our spirits have been tied together forever. Just as they eternally will be. You have always known me as I have always prodded you to take the plunge that you finally took with your sending all the way to Japan to find me now. Do not worry about me. What happens to me now is unimportant, as I have fulfilled my own destiny. To the blind it will appear that the others have won. What can they ever know? 7/14/95
(Written while in London, England while staying at the Gore Hotel on Queen’s Way Street for a concert by Sheryl Crow and trip won by Marie as radio contest. The story came to me as a dream at 3:00 am in the morning, July 14, 1995. I got up and went in the bathroom with pen and pad and wrote what had come to me in the dream).
Number one hundred fourteen of one hundred fifty-eight entries.
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