Facing Facts

Lately I have struggled with livng in Korea. In doing so, I have fallen into the poor habit of being hypercritical of this host culture, acting like one of those foreigners whom I observed somewhat incredulously when I first arrived two years ago in Korea. These people practiced with a devoted-sports-fan-fervor the picking apart of every fault of Korean society, vociferously announcing every moment they felt annoyed with anything. "Why don't they just go home, then?" I wondered. "Why stay and ruin it for the rest of us if it's so terrible for them?"

Sadly, shamefully, I have become a part of that category. Far too often I play the game of comparing what occurs here to my cultural perception of how life should flow. It is a game that cannot be won. This poor attitude slipped slowly into my mind, embedding small seeds of dissatisfaction that grew deeply rooted weeds. Often I am not aware of this change, proceeding through my life here, but somewhat broken in doing so.

Recently I have had comments from or conversations with friends that have made me cognizant of this tendency within myself. Having long identified myself as an optimist and a lover of different cultures, I am absolutely horrified at realizing my own cultural snobbery, my culturism. The conversation that most causes me to reflect was one I had the other day when speaking with Adam, who recently returned to begin his second year in Korea. We meandered to the topic of life in Korea. Adam voiced a comment that awakened echoes in my mind of my own frustrations so long ago: "Why do people complain about living here? Who's forcing them to stay? I just find that there's so much to learn from how Koreans do things."

Slightly surprised, I asked him how exactly he meant this. "What have you learned?" I wanted to know.

I am currently finding that I cannot exactly remember what he said, likely because I was so astonished and impressed with his overall attitude here. I believe he spoke about the different pace of life as compared to ours, that so much can be gleaned by slowing down our rush to get past the crowds, by observing the individual people within them. How snobbish have I been in refusing to see that when I become aware, there are an infinite number of lessons I can learn from Korean people? I need to shed my jaded musings; I need to search again for learning.

As I sat shaking sleep from my early morning mind this morning on the subway, I surveyed those around me. Some are faces that I see every day, fellow commuters heading to work, people I never likely will actually know. Students sat thumbing through the morning paper. A few elderly women hugged various packages on their laps. There was something suggestive of magic in this scene. It spoke so much of normality, but breathed hints of a people I should love and respect.

I live in their country. I am the foreigner. I must embrace this or choose to leave. So currently, still contracted to my job in Korea, I hope to seek all that I can learn from these people who are simultaneously so different from yet so similar to me.