Growing Up Doesn’t Really Mean Much

Like every adult, I know I have needs. Personal needs. A need for fulfilment. A need for excitement. A need for intellectual stimulation. Sexual needs. Needs for friendship and love. A need for music. 

And as time went by, I became such a unique individual that no one other than myself can fully know and satisfy those continuous, complex, arbitrary, and yet essential needs. Paradoxically, I need so many things to survive and keep myself going now as an adult, whereas when I was a baby all I needed was food, shelter, safety, and my parents. 

Unfortunately, to my parents I’m still that baby. It’s unimaginable for them to think of me as a grown-up with such complicated needs that only I can fill now, that even surpasses their understanding. 

To my parents I’ll always be that baby. They want to protect me. A baby cannot be political. A baby cannot be strong. A baby cannot be independent and tough. Most of all, babies cannot be sexual. In a baby world, that reasonably means the baby will put itself in danger. Parents have every reason to be protective against those things.

That’s why it’ll probably be heartbreaking for my parents to learn everything about me— all that I am, all that I’ve done, all that I now know. It will shatter their world. It will weird them out. It will be like getting to know a stranger.

I’m afraid that they will deny it, and instead of bridging the gap between the baby me and the grown-up me, they will reject the grown-up me. Even if they do accept the grown-up me, I’m worried that they will sadly look back at my baby days with nostalgia, the baby they understand, and long for those days. I’m afraid that they will regret the person I’ve become.

Thinking about these things makes me feel melancholy, a swirling unsettling mix of things I now know and things I’ve felt from the beginning of time. I love them painfully.

things i dont wanna forget

- seeing that my external hard drive is without a case, my dad just casually digging around to find one somewhere in the house for a good 30 minutes, coming to my room from time to time to see if a case he found fits, and ending up giving me his

- looking at a pic of me as a naked little 1-month-old baby, my mom saying that she has never stopped loving me from then.

 

I’m a hybrid

Just some ruminations from Paris.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable— if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. 

Phillipians 4:8

Even the bible teaches us to find and focus on what’s pure and authentic from our deepest core, our identity that is revealed in Christ. For me, being authentic means rebelling against the world’s fixed “cadres” — french for “frames”.. that fixes people, molds people, pushes people to become identical cookies in a pan, and lose their true colors on the face of fear of dissimilation, fear of rejection, fear of being shunned by the powerful in the world. Fear of being called a failure.

I see frames when I see young girls looking at the camera with a gaze of Marilyn Monroe, guys who buff themselves up and exaggerate their “ruggedness” and toughness as if those characteristics validate their sexuality. At Harvard, when we talk about internships and career plans. In Korea, where difference means wrong, and shame is imprinted into your heart by the most trivial eccentricities: if your boyfriend happens to be black. If you’re a woman with muscles. If you’re a man who doesn’t want to go to military. Or, at a most basic level, I’m sure people can resonate, if you’re a “Korean” who can’t speak Korean. Those things don’t rest as simply “differences.” They become sin in the eyes of the majority who’s not. Why? Because that will ensure and confirm that they’re right. How easy is it… when you’re in the “in group” automatically by just being a certain skin color, sharing a language, sharing a largely recognizable practice of culture, custom, including but not limited to marriage. So that people no longer have to work for their righteousness by real actions and real virtue, that I believe transcends cultural customs and the temporal, locational specificities of societies?

When all is stripped away, what remains? Will you be proud of what you see in the mirror? Will you place value in the eyes of others , always searching, always anxious, always swaying, or will you find it within yourself that you can carry around anywhere you go? 

After 22 years of travel, after 22 years’ worth of conversations and interactions, assimilations and dissimilations, embraces and alienations, loves and battles, excitements and disappointments, searches and revelations,

I look in the mirror and am comfortable seeing a hybrid, not entirely Korean, not entirely American, not your typical princess but also not really a “bro” either, someone who is angered by and challenges the conservative but also not entirely letting go of the idea of discipline and morals, who listens to Katy Perry but also loves Beethoven, a drummer AND a flutist.  Who loves both. In their own ways of course.

add a little bit of French to that mix and there, you’ve got me, boston-based Korean hipster with a tinge of French philosophy. All I want to do is every day “do the right thing,” with a moral sense that evolves and grows with new understandings I learn from the bible, the people i meet, the thinkers i read, the places i visit. After all, what does it mean to not be self-absorbed in the world, but to be open and humble, engaging the world each day with a genuine desire to influence and be influenced?

English Lyrics to “Mission”(사명)

1. 주님이 홀로 가신 그 길 나도 따라 가오 / That road You have walked alone, I will follow. 모든 물과 피를 흘리신 그 길을 나도 가오 / That road on which You have spilled all your blood and water, I will follow.
험한 산도 나는 괜찮소 바다 끝이라도 나는 괜찮소 / May it be the rocky mountains, I’ll be okay with that. May it be the depth of the seas, I’ll be okay with that.
죽어가는 저들을 위해 나를 버리길 바라오 / For the sake of those who are dying, I wish to abandon myself.
아버지 나를 보내주오 나는 달려가겠소 / Father, send me. I will gladly run there.
목숨도 아끼지 않겠소 나를 보내주오 / I won’t take even my life to be more precious than that. Send me.

2. 험한 산도 나는 괜찮소 바다 끝이라도 나는 괜찮소 /   May it be the rocky mountains, I’ll be okay with that. May it be the depth of the seas, I’ll be okay with that. 
죽어가는 저들을 위해 나를 버리길 바라오  / For the sake of those who are dying, I wish to abandon myself. 
아버지 나를 보내주오 나는 달려가겠소 / Father, send me. I will gladly run there. 
목숨도 아끼지 않겠소 나를 보내주오 / I won’t take even my life to be more precious than that. Send me. 
세상이 나를 미워해도 나는 사랑하겠소 / Even if the world hates me, I will love them.
세상을 구원한 십자가 나도 따라 가오 / The Cross that saved the world, I will follow.
생명을 버리면서까지 나를 사랑한 당신 / You, who loved me, even with taking your own life.
이 작은 나를 받아 주오 나도 사랑하오 / Take me, a mere small being, I love you as well.