re: A. 2
After I wrote this post and changed the page title to “lab,” something unexpected happened: I could no longer write. I didn’t want to. The stage became too bright for me, too pressured for me to enter. Good writing comes from a dark, narrow nook. It’s vulnerable, sincere, and disciplined. It does not shout “I come first,” or “Look: I’m a total mess.” It enters quietly yet clearly and performs with both high technique and innate style.
And then there’s another thought: that a conventional action-driven plot does not fit my story. I come from a culture where silence, sacrifice, and hierarchy matter so much. My country is a country that was once stricken by war, poverty, and colonization. To survive, we would do anything to make a living, to make sense of this unfair world. As the third generation of the bloody Korean War, my homework has changed: instead of worrying about surviving each day, I was supposed to watch and learn how the intellectuals of this world were made and follow the pattern. The cost of this escape: loss of home and mother tongue. But no, there was no silly time for refusal or hesitation. I had to throw away my pride and continue the journey of transformation.
Naturally, I fancied the western idea of independence — the life of a cowboy who roams the wild freely, cut clean from the ties of the past, fully alert, mysterious, and mighty. It took me many, many years to realize that such a lifestyle was an impossible myth, that everything in life is deeply interconnected, even nature.
Now back in Seoul, my hometown, I no longer think: I shouldn’t be here. But I still wonder: how do I live well, as the person I am, without betraying my inheritance? How do I loosen the grip of the past, the culture, the history that at times haunts me and chains me? How do I let go of an old wisdom that no longer works, and transform — truly transform — into a fine version of myself, an artist, a writer, a woman, a Korean, a speaker of multiple languages, an avid traveler?
It is a question, but also a statement. And I know where the answer lies: it is laid in the journey itself.
Buen Camino. The journey is the reward, don’t you see now?
