Saturday, March 03, 2007
Housecleaning
After leaving the camp, (which was on a Korean Island called Chejudo) and saying goodbye to my kids and co-workers, I had a 6 hour layover in Seoul before my flight back to Tokyo. As such, I decided to come into town to have lunch with my principle Taekwondo master in Seoul, Master Jang. Like a lot of my best friends in the world, he doesn't particularly speak English that well, but it never seemed to stop him from not only conveying his amazing sense of humor (ex. How are you, sir? I have cold. My nose is waterfall.) but also the wisdom that has kept me in his tutilage for the past 9 years.
While having lunch, we spoke about our individual faults, weaknesses, and struggles in life, and in particular, the perils of his relationship with his new wife. (Whom, by western standards, he didn't particularly know that well before he married). In talking about his having to get used to not just his new life as a married man, but her as well, I asked him what he thought of the whole process and he responded by telling me how much he'd come to realize that his mind is just like his room.
As we were speaking in a combination of broken English and Korean, I thought I'd just misunderstood him...much like the time he said "American movie have many pucking.", and his statement was in regards to the amount of swear words, not hockey. When I asked him to elaborate however, I came to understand not just that he was saying what he meant to say in one of his prototypically humorous analogies, but also that he was telling me something that didn't just apply to himself, but to me too. He told me:
"I clean my room, but next day...dirty again. Then I clean again. Dirty again. I think my mind is same. My wife makes me angry, and my mind become dirty. I clean it of bad thing, and then sometime again, dirty again. She make me angry, It's dirty again. I clean it again, but sooner or later, dirty again. Life is repitition."
After he said that, he turned his attention back to his meal, and I did the same, pondering his words. And it wasn't long before I came to realize how applicable it was to my own mental struggle of letting go of the anger surrounding the events of the past six months.
The fact of the matter is, racism is nothing new for me. When I had first moved to Okemos (predominantly white) up from Detroit (ALL black), when I went trick or treating for the first time, one of the first people to answer the door looked down at me and said "Aren't you in the wrong neighborhood, son?" And in all seriousness, she seemed to mean it. That was when I was 12. Although I won't bore you all with the details, the stories, the stereotypes and the near-fights of the past 10 years, (not only in the states, in Korea, and here in Japan) I will say that it's not only something that I've learned to be quite sensitive about, but also that it's something that I've always strived to rise above.
It's why I graduated from both high school and college with all As, why I wanted to represent my country for Taekwondo in the Olympics, and above all else, why no one has ever seen me loss my temper. The fact that my life out here has given me the opportunity to shatter stereotypes, to prove people wrong, and to show this side of the world an African American that defied every kind of category that people could dish out is one of the things that I've always gathered the most strength from. It's always been empowering for me. And to be put in not one situation, but TWO where I was too penniless to say no, and too powerless to overcome was just the most painful experience I ever could have dealt with. It was purely, simply, awful.
Although in my heart, I do believe that time can heal all wounds, Master Jang's words also showed me that it requires effort too. In his own simple way- maybe even without his knowing it- he reminded me that to struggle against one's self is simply to be human, and that what matters isn't that we always have the perfect mentality towards life; but simply that we always try to. When I first decided to start my business 5 years ago, my good friend Chad told me something that I still hold dear:
"Shoot for the moon...and in the least you'll fall amongst the stars."
That being the case, perhaps the success that is starting to come to fruition for me is not just because these losses forced me to 'clean my room' but because they forced me to clean out the rest of the house as well.
While having lunch, we spoke about our individual faults, weaknesses, and struggles in life, and in particular, the perils of his relationship with his new wife. (Whom, by western standards, he didn't particularly know that well before he married). In talking about his having to get used to not just his new life as a married man, but her as well, I asked him what he thought of the whole process and he responded by telling me how much he'd come to realize that his mind is just like his room.
As we were speaking in a combination of broken English and Korean, I thought I'd just misunderstood him...much like the time he said "American movie have many pucking.", and his statement was in regards to the amount of swear words, not hockey. When I asked him to elaborate however, I came to understand not just that he was saying what he meant to say in one of his prototypically humorous analogies, but also that he was telling me something that didn't just apply to himself, but to me too. He told me:
"I clean my room, but next day...dirty again. Then I clean again. Dirty again. I think my mind is same. My wife makes me angry, and my mind become dirty. I clean it of bad thing, and then sometime again, dirty again. She make me angry, It's dirty again. I clean it again, but sooner or later, dirty again. Life is repitition."
After he said that, he turned his attention back to his meal, and I did the same, pondering his words. And it wasn't long before I came to realize how applicable it was to my own mental struggle of letting go of the anger surrounding the events of the past six months.
The fact of the matter is, racism is nothing new for me. When I had first moved to Okemos (predominantly white) up from Detroit (ALL black), when I went trick or treating for the first time, one of the first people to answer the door looked down at me and said "Aren't you in the wrong neighborhood, son?" And in all seriousness, she seemed to mean it. That was when I was 12. Although I won't bore you all with the details, the stories, the stereotypes and the near-fights of the past 10 years, (not only in the states, in Korea, and here in Japan) I will say that it's not only something that I've learned to be quite sensitive about, but also that it's something that I've always strived to rise above.
It's why I graduated from both high school and college with all As, why I wanted to represent my country for Taekwondo in the Olympics, and above all else, why no one has ever seen me loss my temper. The fact that my life out here has given me the opportunity to shatter stereotypes, to prove people wrong, and to show this side of the world an African American that defied every kind of category that people could dish out is one of the things that I've always gathered the most strength from. It's always been empowering for me. And to be put in not one situation, but TWO where I was too penniless to say no, and too powerless to overcome was just the most painful experience I ever could have dealt with. It was purely, simply, awful.
Although in my heart, I do believe that time can heal all wounds, Master Jang's words also showed me that it requires effort too. In his own simple way- maybe even without his knowing it- he reminded me that to struggle against one's self is simply to be human, and that what matters isn't that we always have the perfect mentality towards life; but simply that we always try to. When I first decided to start my business 5 years ago, my good friend Chad told me something that I still hold dear:
"Shoot for the moon...and in the least you'll fall amongst the stars."
That being the case, perhaps the success that is starting to come to fruition for me is not just because these losses forced me to 'clean my room' but because they forced me to clean out the rest of the house as well.
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