Questions and Answers

I wrote a while back that I didn't know why I was here. Of course, no one can know all the reasons for everything - I'm a firm believer that everything serves more than one purpose, and that God never does anything for a single reason. But I think I know some of the answer to that question now, although the greater part of it goes unanswered.

This is the first time in recent memory that I've spent longer the four or five months in the same place, associating with the same people. In fact, at this point it's almost been twice that amount of time. And so, I think for the first time in a long time, I've learned something new about myself. Or rather, somethings. Putting yourself in a lot of new or different situations will teach you a lot about yourself, but I think I'd forgotten that remaining in the same place or situation for a while will also teach you about yourself. It's been awhile since I've had relationships with people that I didn't leave after just a few months. Being in the same place with the same people has given me the opportunity to examine myself in this context in a little more depth. Actually, I should be more accurate: it's not that I've learned anything really new about myself, per se, but that I've learned more about how those things are interconnected. I've (I think) come to see a little more clearly the whys of certain things, and how one thing influences another so that x result comes out. And it's never just one or two things. People - and especially their motivations and actions - are seriously complicated things.

To be honest, I'm not so happy with what I've discovered. But then, I've always been the type not to see the good in something for staring at its flaws, and that includes myself. Especially myself. It's like being unable to see the beauty of the whole forest for mourning over a few dead or dying trees. Or, when you finally do look around you, bemoaning that even the healthy, beautiful trees have their flaws. Of course they do. Nothing on this planet - human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or otherwise - is perfect, and expecting anything to be perfect will only result in disappointment. I think I've done a good job at embracing this in other people, but as of yet I struggle with allowing myself to make mistakes - to be human, in other words. Am I ever going to be perfectly patient? Not in this life. Perfectly understanding? Nope, not that either. Nor will I ever be perfectly honest or perfectly nice or perfectly full of love. But it's one thing to tell yourself that and know it intellectually, and quite another to forgive yourself and move on and let those imperfections and mistakes go. The gap between knowledge and true understanding can only be bridged with help, and no ordinary mortal help, at that. And is true with anything involving the divine and changes of human nature, that takes time and patience and a lot of work.

Happy Quarter-Century to Me!

25 years ago today, at this very hour (1230), I was just over six hours old.

In that 25 years, a lot has happened. 25 years. It's a whole quarter of a century.

The last year of my life has been quite the upheaval. I decided that I wasn't happy where I was (academically speaking). I dropped out of school. I changed my life goals. I nannied for a semester. I moved 2/3 of the way across the country. I made new friends, settled into a new educational atmosphere, took care of my grandparents, adjusted to a different culture, lost both grandfathers, made life decisions impacting my immediate (and possibly long-term) future. I've smiled, cried, laughed, shouted, slept and dreamed and made mistakes. I've grown. Perhaps not as much as I should have, or could have, but I know that I'm a better person today than I was one year ago, and that's something.

Here's hoping the next year is better than the last.

Not That Today Was A Rainy Day At All

비오는 날 (Rainy Day) by 김사랑 (Kim Sarang)

I love this song. I don't know that I've ever even listened to the lyrics, I just love the sound of his voice singing, the simple guitar accompaniment in the beginning, and the mellow, flowing melody. It captures perfectly the feel of a rainy day for me. And there's something about that first breath he takes before he starts singing, and every other intake of breath we hear throughout the track, that makes me love this song. Usually you don't get to hear the genesis of a song, but I think it's a good reminder that there are two sides to everything, and that we cannot just give continuously, but need to pause every once in a while to be refreshed.

The End of Summer

Summer has never been my favorite season. I much prefer the milder temperatures and back-to-school bustle of autumn. But the thing I do love about summer is the long hours of sunlight, and sitting on the porch lazily watching the sun set and swinging my feet. Summer evenings are especially gorgeous here in Utah, when the sun sets in a blaze of red-orange-yellow-pink glory behind the mountains. I love the slight chill that creeps into the air as the sky gradually darkens, and the ch-ch-ch-ch-ch of the sprinklers as they spray arcs of water across the lawn.

My last year of undergrad starts Monday. The evenings are getting chillier, despite the 90+ degree weather we still have during the day. September is less than a week away. Autumn is right around the corner now.

The State of AnnMarie

Houses and businesses in the middle of Seoul

Still jobless. Still place-to-live-less. Still carless. BUT! Purposeless no longer.

A couple of days ago, Tuesday to be exact (that would be 9 August), I finally decided what I'm going to do after I graduate next year.

I'm going to Korea, people.

Crossing the Han River running through the middle of Seoul in the morning on the train

Ever since April, when the whole question of what I was going to do after I (finally!) graduate in May 2012 first presented itself to my mind, I've been worrying this like a dog with a bone. Should I go to graduate school in the fall? In America? In Korea? What about working for a year and paying off a good chunk of my student loans? In America? In Korea? What the heck would I go to graduate school for, anyway? Something to do with Korea, yes, but what? Literature? Language? International politics? Should I try to work for the government? Should I teach? What should I do? Underneath this whole debate was the fact that I very much want to start a family - preferably before I die of old age. Or, you know, I turn 30. And let's face it, the odds of finding someone to marry in Korea are much smaller than they are in Utah, or even in the DC area (which is where I was contemplating going to grad school).

Kimchi pots at the historical village Minseokcheon

I finally took the question to the temple when I went on Tuesday. As I sat in the celestial room after thinking about it from many different angles, I concluded that there were really two things I want in life: First, I want to have a family and live with them in such a way that we can be together forever. Second, I want to serve the people in Korea in some fashion. Right now, I don't have control over the first one. But I do have control over the second one. And honestly, I don't want to do the "responsible thing" and go to graduate school; I want to go to Korea. This whole debate was ultimately just that: a debate between what I wanted to do and what I thought I should do. When I finally decided to go with my heart over my head, I felt so much better. Of course, that doesn't mean that I'm not open to a change of plans. I still trust that God, possessing the Big Picture, knows what's best for me better than I can. And so I'm willing to make a course correction if I need to. But at the same time, who's to say that what's best for me isn't going to Korea? Just because the odds of finding someone to marry in Korea are small doesn't mean that I won't find someone; after all, if that person is in Korea, it doesn't matter how good my odds are here, because he's somewhere else.

So there you have it. That's my plan. I'm still not solid on any of the specifics, like when exactly I'll go, or if I'll teach English or go to grad school in Seoul, or even if I might end up doing something else entirely. But I'm going. And I feel good about that. ^_^

Looking down on Seoul from one of the surrounding mountains

Some Things I Am Passionate About

family

For someone who travels around as much as I do, the fact that I'm a huge homebody is a little surprising. But of all the things that matter to me, my family matters the most. Despite their flaws, they are good people who love and appreciate each other, and me.

 learning & knowledge

 From the time I was very little, my parents instilled in me a love for knowledge. To me, the world is an amazing place full of so many things to know and learn about.

solutions

I love working out problems, finding the answers to complicated questions. Logic puzzles, crosswords, and sudokus are only part of it; practical things like rock climbing also fascinate me. I love that feeling when things finally click into place and you experience a moment of pure understanding.

connections

The world is probably more interconnected than we can possibly imagine. I love exploring how things are connected, on the micro scale as well as the macro. I love the connections between people and discovering why things and people react the way they do.

Korea

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit. I love Korea. I love the people, I love the food, I love the culture, and I love the way I love Korea. I love my country, but I was born here without choosing it; to me Korea is the home I chose to love.

respect & understanding

I'm passionate about mutual understanding and respect. So many problems in this world are caused by making snap judgments about people and their actions based on how that person sees the world. The truth is that there's more than one "right" way to live, and most people do things for a reason - even if that reason or logic is not immediately apparent to you.

light

I love light. I love sunsets, the subtle glow of a sunlight-filled home, well-lit movie and drama sets, the way good lighting can make or break a picture. I love the warmth of the sun's rays, the twinkle of the stars in a pitch-black sky, the shy radiance of a quarter moon. I love how light can make my soul exult.

stories

Stories play an integral role in human existence. Stories can teach, can warn, can inspire and uplift, can be a way to express things too dangerous or too personal to express in any other way. The stories we tell ourselves tell us about ourselves; they can open a small glimpse into another world or another way of thinking. They offer us the opportunity to explore our lives and the possible consequences of our actions.

music

Of all the things humans do, I think music is the one that brings us closest to the divine. I love listening to music, and I love creating it; there is no other feeling quite like working together with others to bring to life something that makes you feel bigger than just the sum total of your disparate parts. The transcendence of Palestrina's gorgeous counterparts, the sheer triumph of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overature...with those as evidence, you could never convince me that there is no God.

Photo credits: books, solutions, understanding, stories

All That In Such A Small Space?

I've been thinking a lot recently about what I want. Lately my head has been such a mess that it's been driving me crazy, thinking about what people are thinking about me not having a job yet and not having found a place to live next semester yet, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Sometimes I wonder if they think I'm just being lazy for the heck of it, "freeloading" off my grandparents, like my grandpa sometimes accuses me of doing. It boggles my mind to think that some people really think I enjoy being like this, or that I don't know just how much of a loser I'm being, and so feel compelled to point it out to me. Trust me, I am infinitely more intimately acquainted with the situation than anyone else. Except maybe God. But anyway.

So, I've been thinking about what I want. The thing is...I'm not sure what that is. I have long term goals - I want to have a family, I want to live in Korea, I want to help the people of the world somehow - but the problem is, I don't have short-term goals to act as stepping stones to get to those long term goals. I don't know what to do. I don't know where I'm heading, exactly. Honestly, beyond the desire to have a family, I don't really have any other specific goals at all, really.

Thinking about all this has been making my head spin around and around until it literally gives me a headache. One morning I was in the shower, and I started thinking about all the things I've been pondering the last month or so: getting a job, paying for school, paying off my loans, finding a place to live, my relationship with my grandparents, my complete lack of any romantic relationships (ever in my life), domestic politics, international politics, feeling almost guilty about being full when millions of people are starving, using running water so casually when millions don't even have it, various and sundry character flaws, graduate school, taking the GRE, studying for the GRE, whether or not I should go to Korea and work a year before starting graduate school, contemplating what the heck I'm going to do with my life...etc. After a half-hour+ of this (I take long showers), I was ready to scream and desperate to find a way to just SHUT IT OFF already. I told a friend once that I felt like all my worries were roped together, and every time I started trying to think about one in an effort to find a solution, it gave the whole string a tug and everything came crashing into my brain all at once. It's enough to make one go insane.

I think I could handle all of this a little better if it wasn't for the fact that in the last year my entire life has totally changed. I moved all the way across the country into a very different cultural setting, left behind all my friends and my comfort zone, radically changed my educational environment and my expectations for my future, and live in an environment fraught with emotional pitfalls and guilt trips. My response to it all hasn't really done a lot to make me love and admire myself, which in turns feeds the cycle of think-get overwhelmed-avoid-reap the consequences-self loathe-repeat. And yet, I don't think much of all of that shows on the surface, except for maybe as it manifests as a bad attitude, increased touchiness and sensitivity, and an increased penchant for snapping at people and using hurtful sarcasm.

I need to find my iPod and start running again. Maybe that will help me sort out my head a bit and give me a little motivation to be up and doing. Only, I haven't seen my iPod in two weeks...I hope it didn't get stolen. ~sigh~

Gone

My family left this morning.



I miss them already. ~sigh~

Pink Martini - Aspettami

Half the Sky

Photo can be found here

A friend of mine is spending the summer in Uganda. She just posted this post about the thing she's found the hardest about being in Uganda. The whole post is very thought-provoking and interesting, but I'll just quote a little bit here:

"I may be in Africa right now, but still there is a separation between me and these people, as tangible as the glass pane separating me and these little boys.  It’s a weird feeling.  I wonder how long it takes in Africa to stop feeling like a philanthropic tourist.  I’ve wondered a lot since being here if I love Africa for the right reasons.  Or better, do I want to make changes in Africa for the right reasons?  There are over 8,000 NGOs registered in Uganda all trying to make a difference, some for the right reasons, some for other reasons.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of development here.  It’s different than I thought it would be.  It’s messy and disorganized and sometimes (often) ineffective.  I believe in it though.  And I believe that the sooner we’re on the same side of the glass the better it will be."

I just finished the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide yesterday. (I wrote a little about this before here, before the book came out. The authors had released excerpts as articles in the New York Times.) It's a sobering read, but a very eye-opening one as well. We, as humans, have a tendency to block out the uncomfortable things about life and the human existence. I find this tendency to be much stronger in America; the majority of us tend to turn cringing away from the homeless man on the streets of our own town, let alone from the suffering of millions in other countries. Safe in our little bubble of (tenuous and fragile) prosperity, we don't really want to spend a lot of time contemplating the plight of the uneducated, abused, malnourished, and impoverished "other" people that live all over the world. People that don't even have a real floor or running water, let alone the latest iPod or the newest smartphone.

And then, when we do finally look outside of our carefully constructed bubble world, we go into these people's countries and cultures and try to "solve the problem" with no reference to their situations within that culture. Which doesn't really solve anything and just takes a lot of money to achieve (usually) very minimal results. And so, for the last few days I've been thinking about that, and my friend's post just helped me articulate some of my thoughts. The authors of Half the Sky make the point that the kind of aid that countries like Uganda and Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan, etc really need is the grassroots kind - that is, locals helping locals, funded by foreigners when the locals don't have the resources. Reading Half the Sky has really gotten me thinking about how we're supposed to fulfill the commandment the Savior gave us when He said we need to love our neighbors as ourselves. Obviously, we need to spread the gospel, and obviously it's the only thing that's really going to fix the problems in this world; everything else is just some form of a stopgap measure, when you get right down to it, or treating the symptoms instead of the actual disease, if you will. But on the other hand, the Church (or its members) can't just waltz into places and start teaching the people and telling everyone to clean up their act without so much as a by-your-leave, and some kind of action must be taken in the interim. The question is, what is most effective? And how can I be part of the solution instead of part of the problem?

That's what I've been pondering. And no solution has readily presented itself. That's the thing about problems that confront half the population of the world - there are no easy solutions.

Things As They Are

Photo can be found here

 Recently I have been pondering on things as they are: our justice system, our food, our cars, our school systems, even the music industry. And though it isn't very profound, it's been occurring to me, over and over, that just because things are as they are right now, doesn't mean that they should be that way. We punish criminals in this society by sending them to jail. Our cars run on gasoline. We HAVE cars, as opposed to any other form of transportation. We eat flour as our primary staple. We send our kids to school starting when they're five and teach them in a certain way, expecting them to stay in school for the majority of their youth.

It's true enough that things as they are work well enough for the majority the majority of the time. But if there's one thing that SJC taught me, it's to question your underlying assumptions. And what I see is the penal system failing to actually improve the lives of those who are sent through it, pollution from all the millions of personal cars and a lack of adequate public transportation, rising education costs and fewer returns on the investment of so much time and money. I see a culture getting increasingly top-heavy, bloated, and stagnating. To my eyes, Americans have little experience with things as they are for other people and other cultures, and so are touting their own status quo loud and long as "the way things should be". And really, "things as they are" is really only "things as I see them from my point of view", since none of us are capable of seeing all the facets, nuances, and variations of life.

Not that I'm advocating radical social change here. I'm just voicing what's been rattling around in my head lately, and maybe suggesting that you take a little time yourself to contemplate what things you're doing in your life just because "it's always been that way" or "we've always done it that way". Tradition and habit are not sufficient reasons for doing anything; there should be thoughtful meaning and purpose in everything you undertake. So get out this week and maybe drive to work or the grocery store along another route and take the opportunity to see things from a different perspective.

Quote can be found here

Nothing and Too Much to Say

CN Blue - 사랑빛 (Lovelight)

Have you ever thought too much? I liken the feeling to trying to untangle a ball of yarn. The more you try to straighten everything out, the more tangled and complicated it all gets until you just want to hurl the whole mess as far away from you as you possibly can. The upshot of the whole thing is that even though I have so much on my mind, I really have nothing to say. Only old problems getting hashed and rehashed in my head until I just want to cover my ears, jump up and down, and scream. Unfortunately, that's not very productive. It doesn't accomplish much at all. Or anything, for that matter.

Recently I've been wondering why I'm here in Logan. Academically, obviously I'm here to finish school (finally!), but the thing about life is there's never just one reason for anything. Take SJC for example. Ostensibly I went to Annapolis to fulfill a dream I'd had since high school of attending St. John's. But I think the real reason I went there was to have the experiences I needed to decide to go on a mission, which was an important part of my development and growth as a person. And of course I met many wonderful people who have influenced me in many positive ways. Not to mention I gained a unique kind of education that I couldn't have gotten anywhere else or in any other way. And I fell in love with the East Coast and its sense of history. I learned a lot from my years in Annapolis. So...why am I here at USU? What am I supposed to be learning from this experience? Maybe it's too early to tell. After all, I didn't move to Annapolis expecting any of the outcomes that actually arose. Maybe my problem is that I moved here with certain expectations and those things haven't happened. I thought I was coming here for one reason and maybe that's not the reason at all. But then, what is it? I wish I knew. 

Why, why Georgia, why?

I am driving up 85 in the
kind of morning that lasts all afternoon
just stuck inside the gloom

Four more exits to my apartment but
I am tempted to keep the car in drive
and leave it all behind

Cause I wonder sometimes
about the outcome
of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

I rent a room and I fill the spaces with
wood in places to make it feel like home
but all I feel's alone
It might be a quarter life crisis
or just the stirring in my soul

Either way, I wonder sometimes
about the outcome
of a still verdictless life

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

So what, so I've got a smile on me
but it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my head
Don't believe me
Don't believe me
When I say I've got it down

Everybody is just a stranger but
that's the danger in going my own way
I guess it's the price I have to pay
still "Everything happens for a reason"
is no reason not to ask myself

Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Am I living it right?
Why, why Georgia, why?

Life Is What Happens When You're Making Other Plans

People keep asking me what I want to do with my degree, and the truth is, I really don't know. But people don't want to hear that you're almost 25 and have no life plan.

The thing is, I did have a life plan. It's just that life didn't work out according to it, and now I'm scrambling to make a new one. In a world where everything worked out according to how I would like it to, I'd get married, move to Korea for a few years, have some kids, and work from home with a partner writing dramas that would be amazingly well-accepted critically as well as popularly. And then (to placate my mother and sooth her fears that her grandchildren wouldn't speak English if we lived in Korea) we'd move back to the States for a bit and live somewhere not too far away from my family so my sister and I can have our kids play together. And everyone would be happy and everything would be peachy and my husband and I would retire and have cute grandkids to spoil and serve a mission and just have a lot of fun.

Of course, I think the actuality might end up just a teeny bit different. But just a teeny bit.

비야

I love this song. Yellow Monsters is one of the best k-rock groups around, in my opinion. And it fits my mood perfectly.

I'm sorry I never post anything other than music, but right now I'm having a hard time gathering my thoughts well enough to make enough sense out of the chaos to write anything.