As I listen to my little 6 year old boy practicing piano in the other room, my mind drifts to memories of my father and the stories he told us about his family's travails during the Korean War. He would tell us how while they were starving due to food shortages, the American GI's would come by in their jeeps and throw mysterious dark bars of sweet and delicious "food" as they drove off. He found out decades later that it was Hershey's chocolate bars.
His older sister would recount stories of heavy loss from the war including the loss of 4 siblings; one, just barely 15 years of age made to hold a rifle and march to the Angang river to fight the oncoming North Koreans and Chinese and how shell shocked and traumatized he was from the experience. He did not make it out alive from the war. My grandfather, as told to my mother from her mother-in-law, was a habitual drunk who would oftentimes be found passed out in the forest unable to make it back home from a drinking binge and arriving with mosquito bites all over his body. Legend has it that he was raised by a mother whose temper was so fiery that she could, in a fit of rage, jump from the living room to the front gate in one lunge. It makes me wonder if mental illness and addiction was something that was passed on from generations back. My grandfather was branded as being wanted for treason against the Empire of Japan during the time of Japanese colonization of Korea had to flee Korea in the dead of night to the Philippines to save his life. Little did he know the Japanese were there, too. In reality, I wonder if he was not so much a nationalist resistance fighter but a loud-mouth drunk who said inappropriate things at the most inappropriate times. Is it defiling my ancestors by saying such things? On the contrary, I appreciate them more as they shed so much light into why my family is the way they are now, in this generation. My grandfather passed away when my father was just a little boy and unable to care for the three surviving children, my grandmother sent my father away to be taken in by his uncle's family to be an apprentice to learn the trade of photography but in reality, he was treated more like a house servant. My father always resented his uncle and his wife who showed so much favor and love to their only son, my father's cousin, while he felt unwanted and unloved. In his adult life, he was also an alcoholic who drank his livelihood and marriage away. My mother would rationalize his physical and verbal abuse towards her to the fact that he had an upbringing lacking love and affection and not because he was a bad person, a rationale I had trouble accepting. But with age, maturity and life lessons, I see how unresolved emotional pain can fester and ferment in the heart then be explosively released onto the most important and loved people in one's life. The boss abuses the employee, the employee goes home and abuses the wife, the wife hits the children and the children in turn kicks the dog. What is the best way to stop this cycle?
When the Japanese left Korea after the colonization, many of its citizens left behind their livelihood. My father's uncle received all the camera and photography equipment from them as they fled back to Japan and so started a photography business which my father also took up as a successful profession and was at one point getting yearbook contracts from many high schools in his town before he drank it all away. My aunt would relate stories of how patrolling Japanese soldiers would play with the children in the streets and in particular show a fondness for my father as he said and did very cute things. Many of the soldiers were using the children to extract information about their family lives, where they hid their wealth such as silver and gold and to find out who was speaking ill of the Japanese occupation. My mother told me of how her older sister, in her innocence and naivete, led Japanese soldiers to her backyard where my grandparents buried their silver and gold. For some reason, the soldiers did not confiscate the precious metals but counseled my grandparents to bury it back and not to tell anyone they had it. Who knows why they didn't confiscate it but it sure does demonstrate the humanity of people. I'm sure those Japanese soldiers would rather be in Japan, watching their own children grow up and building up their own livelihood than occupy a country that disliked them and wanted them out and resented their superior's orders to use children to extract information. I wonder how much guilt my aunt lived with all her life for what she did. She was only a child and didn't understand the guiles of adults. What a way to lose the childhood innocence of trust and faith in humanity.
This world moves, twists and undulates around a spiral of pain, loss, suffering, disease, war, famine, drought, death as well as love, peace, kindness, learning, redemption, relief, hope. Sometimes, it's all just a little too much to bear, isn't it? Where is this spiral leading to? What is at the end of this seemingly never-ending spiral? I heard a Nihilist quote, "If nothing really matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do" because our actions (and just as importantly, our thoughts) shape reality not just for ourselves, but for others, too.
I pray humanity will choose wisely their thoughts and actions.
