There’s something profound about having a favorite thing — or something you always wanted to be part of — and realizing that when it finally arrives, it no longer consumes you the way it once did.

It’s still there. But it doesn’t possess you like it used to threaten to. It doesn’t come when you were craving it the most; it comes later, when things have settled — your priorities, your circumstances, your state of mind. You’re no longer ready to bite an arm off or pounce with excitement. Instead, there’s a grounded, stable delight — like being picked up and held by the very arms you once longed to be snuggled by.

I’ve encountered this narrative more than a couple of times in my life.

It’s not that I don’t catch moments at their peak. I often tell the story — I even have the beginnings of a mini book draft about it — of how I surfed through the early stages of my graphic design career almost effortlessly. College art school felt like a plastic knife slicing through butter. I was in on every moment.

The same goes for my high school years, when the world behind the campus fences suddenly opened up in front of me. There were so many options. I tried almost everything — except sports. I made friends in at least three different clubs, plus a few more through an ad-hoc chorale that somehow managed to bag gold in a national competition tens of miles away from campus.

That was an experience.

But experiences that arrive later — postponed hits — feel different.

I remember being deeply into J-rock and a lot of things “J-culture,” just short of becoming an otaku. (SpongeBob still hits way better than One Piece ever could.) I cried, though not quite the “1 Liter of Tears” that the Japanese TV series promised in its title. I had no idea what in the world a Fullmetal Alchemist was, but I knew the words to SCANDAL’s “Shunkan Sentimental” almost as if I could actually speak Japanese.

For a brief stretch, I kind of could. My phone was set to the Godan keyboard, Hiragana and all. At one point I even tried to start a spam campaign to bring “the girls,” as I had affectionately dubbed them, to the country. If that didn’t happen, I figured I’d fly over and catch them on their home court someday.

But it took almost two decades before a dream like that translated into anything real.

Nearly twenty years after fantasizing about drinking Yakult while crossing the Shibuya scramble, I finally crossed the Shibuya scramble. Ironically, it happened a few hours after I chose not to drink Yakult with my teriyaki breakfast from a Lawson near where my sister and I were staying in Tokyo.

It had been a fairly normal week of walking around Japan as a casual tourist — someone whose old J-pop spark had long cooled enough that he didn’t even have a specific checklist of things to do once he got there.

And the haul from that trip reflected that.

No CDs. No signed posters. No concert tickets. No memorabilia.

Instead: a pair of Gap boots, a pair of Asics, the obligatory Don Quijote KitKat haul, and a custom signature stamp that I absolutely do not need where I live — but keep using anyway because it’s fun. Oh, and a disposable camera that briefly sent me down an analog film rabbit hole, which I’ve already written plenty about.

Neither “DOLL” nor “Shōjo S” was the soundtrack to my strolls under the neon lights. Aside from tipping my hat to an old obsession — desecrating those songs in front of a native friend at a karaoke joint over a shot of sake and some fake ramen — most of my walks were accompanied by either city noise or Dreamwake’s excellent album.

Usually they played during the morning jogs I somehow managed to pull off through quiet local neighborhoods wherever we happened to be staying.

What was actually on rotation, though, was them — and Underoath.

By most people’s standards, Underoath is probably my favorite band, judging by how consistently I’ve followed their catalog from They’re Only Chasing Safety to The Place After This One. I more or less know how every song goes, and I genuinely like all of it.

I just don’t like calling them my “favorite band.” It feels gross. Not very Underoath-y.

But much like my thoughts about Japan these days, my Underoath enthusiasm has mellowed over the years. It never grew cold. I just no longer feel the urge to level everything in my horizon for the sake of that excitement.

So what ultimately convinced me to pay for the door and see another heavy 2010s band at the acoustically God-forsaken venue known as Skydome — a place that somehow keeps hosting bands like this for reasons known only to God — was simple:

It felt like the right moment for a full circle.

I wasn’t trying to reclaim the past. It wasn’t about novelty, either. And it certainly wasn’t curiosity. I’ve watched enough YouTube videos to know exactly how an Underoath show goes.

That was the point.

It was something I already knew.

Like adobo. You know what it is. You know what it tastes like. You’ve had it many times — and you’ll happily have it again. In a world where actually getting what you came to see happens less and less, that kind of certainty is refreshing.

Almost rare.

Still, even after carbing up at a nearby Mang Inasal, bringing my early-30s OTC meds with me, and resolving to pace myself once the opening backing track hit, something about a long-running imagination finally becoming real managed to catch me off guard.

Because singing in front of your computer screen, standing up for the breakdowns, and breaking your neck to “Lost inside of excuses!” in your bedroom at 3PM on a lazy Saturday afternoon is one thing.

Doing it in the same room as the band — with a PA system hitting more parts of your body than a pair of bookshelf speakers ever could — is another thing entirely.

You can’t replay it. There’s no rewind button. You can’t run it back even if you want to, because you’re actually lost inside whatever is happening in that moment.

And I’m not a smartphone-at-concerts guy. Phones — even iPhones — are terrible in dark venues with epileptic strobes anyway. Besides, I already had my own eyes and a good sightline to the stage, which I always try to secure at shows like this.

So I was fine.

What I didn’t have was a slider — something that could help me grasp what had just happened to me.

I mean, what could be more grounding than sitting right behind the PA desk, chatting briefly with Tom, the FOH guy, and having a completely unobstructed panorama of the room?

I had the pleasure of trading trivia with longtime listeners on the bleachers, even helping one of their friends get up to speed on the band’s complicated relationship with Christianity.

The runway was clear. All the pre-flight boxes were ticked. I had even bought a fresh pair of earplugs because I knew exactly what was about to hit all of us — times two (minus a hundred) in Skydome.

But the moment the show started, all that preparation went straight out the window.

Instead of a smooth, buttery takeoff, I found myself tripping again and again down the aisle toward the altar of sounds I had never heard in the same room as the people actually playing them.

There’s a Marvel character who says that the more you understand things, the more control you can have over them.

The funny thing is, spoilers have never stopped me from enjoying anything.

In this case, the setlist — which Tom was kind enough to set aside for me after the show — didn’t temper my anticipation. It amplified it.

It’s like listening to Define the Great Line or Disambiguation for the tenth time. Knowing exactly what’s coming next somehow multiplies the payoff rather than diminishing it.

Knowledge didn’t reduce the adrenaline. It multiplied it.

And getting the payoff you know is coming — actually receiving it — is a special class of satisfaction.

That feeling carried through the entire show.

Underoath’s music, and the way it resonates with listeners like me, is best compared to a rollercoaster. It’s over almost as soon as it begins. But between those two points is this sustained tension and adrenaline.

Even in the slower, more spacious moments — especially with a multi-catalog setlist generous enough to acknowledge people who stopped listening after Lost in the Sound of Separation — you know something heavy is coming.

And when it drops, it drops hard.

Like kids getting off a rollercoaster — the ones who come out laughing and unscathed — the aftermath leaves you with two impulses: either find a scarier ride, or go straight back to the end of the line.

Because it was too fun, and too short, to experience only once.

And that’s what this Underoath concert felt like.

We need to do this again.