Ilgi-ilhoe_ the Season of 372

1.
They say I'm self-centered.
That I only do what I want to do.

That if something comes up that I don't want to do,
or someone I meet that I don't really connect with,
I bear it and bear it and in the end can't hide the irritation.
That at some point I flip 180 degrees
and turn colder than anyone.

2.
Today, having run on while forgetting what truly mattered.
Today, with nothing left of what I'd been doing for myself.
And every morning, every day,
these painful moments of not knowing
what I'm supposed to be doing, and for what.

3.
Things that seem like polar opposites, not connected at all,
and yet none of them can be said to be wrong —
my rotten sense, my broken awareness, in this reality.

4.
In 2010 I decided my own cup was small
and, thinking "as long as it's not me,"
told myself to be someone who could be a strength beside someone else —
and so I set out again on the job track.

While employed, I worked with ownership.
Wherever I was, under whoever, 
the ownership or the name on the company or project might not be mine,
but it was what I wanted to do.

(Ah — here we go..)
As I keep writing my thoughts out like this..
that hot potato called "sincerity/integrity"
comes leaping out of me too, in exactly this form —

"My" sincerity, or "my own" sincerity,
might have looked to someone else like absurdity, or something off-putting, or something uncommon.
It occurs to me vaguely that it may have looked like the former presidents who, buried in their own sincerity by their own standards, trusted nothing else.

Back then — while I was still employed,
from staff to assistant manager to manager
and then heading a new-business TF between Sejong, Seoul, and Daejeon, commuting every day for over a year —
how much alienation and discomfort must my family, friends, lovers, and coworkers of that time have felt
at my "sincerity"?

One's own sincerity,
the common sense hardened from it, can be
unsettlingly decisive toward the other,
can judge them with laughably sudden verdicts
and constantly readjust the human distance to them.

3-1
Looking back, my awareness, my sense —
the problem wasn't really whether I've actually only done the work I wanted to do
or whether in the end I've only been helping others do what they wanted.

It was that, whatever the state or the form of the work,
I was constantly judging them
and arbitrarily adjusting my distance to them.
And that judgment of "people"
was made entirely through my sincerity, my values, and the private common sense I'd piled up.
To the other side, that judgment must have felt completely out of the blue, whatever it was, caught without guard.

3-2
But more than anything — beyond any situation or condition —
the biggest problem is that a life like mine was judging other lives, sorting right and wrong.

And maybe that's exactly why
I've ended up in the state I'm in now.

5
Why?
I, who am stubborn about social morality,
who can't stand injustice, inequality, corruption —
why did I so endlessly sort right and wrong about others,
judge them, and plead with them?

The fastest answer?

It was out of fear.
My inner resources were so depleted
that I had to attack before being attacked.

It was my wanting to dump
the reason for my own state onto them.

It may just have been violence. 
And the thrill I felt in that process
might well have been the almost-only way
to inject a sense of superiority into low self-esteem —
and that sense of superiority might have been the easiest way
to make today's lonely state acceptable.

And maybe that's exactly why
I ended up in that state back then.


5-1
Why?

Because I was lonely.

And to recognize that loneliness, and to get past it,
I must have consciously trained numbness in.
Then, as an alibi for that conscious act, I started judging the other,
and to justify it I leaned on sincerity.

In the end, to keep "sincerity,"
I must have abused myself like a heretic. There were times of doing nothing, but no times of actually resting; there were many things I wanted to recover, but recovery was hard to expect.

The cause for being able to rest, the only way to recover,
was probably to put distance between me and the family, friends, lovers, and coworkers who must have felt alienated or put off by my sincerity.
When I couldn't live up to their expectations and demands,
when the relationship was more than I could handle,
I thought — no, I felt — it was safer to be alone. Even when the loneliness cut down to the bone.

5-2
Why was I so lonely?

When I was little my parents couldn't make a life together.
I spent my days alone in the countryside.

When I did live with them, I was met with resentment.
Treated as the resented one who had bound them to each other,
I was raised under strict discipline.

It would have been that way. They had no youth of their own.
They were both too young, too attractive to be shackled to someone for life,
and society was far too harsh for them to keep up a life that way.

That's how my early years started, and until high school I went through endless moves and school transfers.
They had no ground to stand on,
and I had no one to fasten my heart to.

5-2-1
They must have confused compassion with love,
admiration with hope.
Maybe they were even lonelier than I was,
and so fought even harder to protect themselves.
For that, their boundaries had to be clear,
and they barely had the margin to look after their own lives.