Right now, I feel like sipirituality is missing from my life. I used to believe in past lives, but I am not sure anymore. Some of the clues that New Age authors provide as evidence to past lives could be explained otherwise. For instance, "if you have a strong attraction or dislike for a certain culture, it could point toward a past life." I had a strong, almost fanatic obssession with anything Japanese. Recently, I have discovered through journaling that I started feeling this way in an attempt to feel better about being Peruvian. When I was a kid, my mom used to idolize the Japanese culture and put down the Peruvian culture. After her long monologues (she has the bad habit of thinking that whenever she likes something or is having a problem, I ought to listen to her without ever voicing any divergent opinion. Those were the days I couldn't even talk about my problems without her interrupting what I was saying or fighting my battles for me.), I would inexplicably feel like I wasn't good enough, and that in order to improve, I had to become like the Japanese. I would spend my spare time cutting out pictures of Japanese people from magazines like Newsweek and National Geographic, and hoping that by staring at them, I would become "Japanese."