drifting away

I am writing from the corridor of the insulated womb of university life, having long looked forward to the day when I could turn my back on my sheltered student existence and proceed to make something of myself in the real world.  Now I feel my eyelids peeling open, and I feel the bite of real, unfiltered light piercing into my skull.  I begin to feel the ground beneath my feet.  My legs are weak and spindly.  And still I am sheltered from the elements by the good will of countless family, friends and teachers who have wished the best upon me, invested their time in me, generally to receive nothing back except shortfalls in the direction of unmet goals.  

I've been a lot of places for my short time in this world.  Indeed, I've been blessed to have travelled as much as I have.  Looking back, I feel that I've been pulled along, and kept alive, by some guiding force of coincidence and luck.  Very little has depended on my own will power or skill in clearing my path.  Rather I have walked through life as if it were a thick woods, with only a single star to guide me.  I've taken minimal precautions and exercised very little foresight.  I have survived mostly due to my privilege, but also partially, as Jimmy Cliff sang, due to my pride.  My pride has the tendency to carry me to dizzying heights before dropping me back to earth, invariably leaving me in a cavity which I can barely climb my way out of.  

I could go on like this forever, so let me clean up my language and start speaking in specifics.  When I came to Japan for the first time three years ago, I felt that I didn't want to leave.  I spent five weeks here, and it made an enormous impact on me.  I was surprised by the peace that was stirred within me.  Having never connected much with my father's land of origin, I had always associated Japan with anxiety-- the anxiety of failure; the anxiety of conformity; the anxiety of responsibility and finding employment and saving face.  

Instead what I found was a certain peace within myself.  When I walk down an American street, I am confronted by the savagery of the city.  The American city is an aggressive landscape.  It is not built for the pedestrian.  The pedestrian is prey to cars, to bright lights, to police, to roving bands of delinquents.  In Japan, there is no feeling of immediate danger when walking through an unknown part of town.  It is easy to get lost, but it is easy to get unlost.  My fight or flight response, as well as (resultantly) my libido, is on less of a hair-trigger response here.  There are cartoonish warnings everywhere, especially in the train stations, that makes me feel like I'm in an episode of the Jetsons.  There is no real danger.  There is, rather, a certain background pressure to conform which is relaxed towards foreigners: don't bother strangers, don't eat snacks on the train, don't break traffic laws, etc.  

On my second take, three years later, I am less struck by internal peace.  Maybe it is my anxiety due to my current stage of life.  I've built up certain expectations upon myself, constructed a very constricted definition of success in my mind, and yet the realization of success is not at all certain.  My dreams are vivid and haunting.  I am stalked by unnamed phantoms, I often wake up while being attacked by something.  I have the feeling that I am being hunted, and that I am being hunted for a very specific reason.  To apply a Jungian analysis to my dreams, I feel that I am probably being hunted by failure.  And when I wake up in the morning, I am less and less inclined to wake up on time.  I am kept in bed by the desire to avoid the failures that accompany waking up.  I am usually a morning person.  I like waking up before daylight and going for a long run to see the sun rise over the river.  But I've seen few sunrises here, this time, in the land of the rising sun.  And it's not due to jetlag.  

In one week I will be in Korea, an unknown place to me.  My head will be swimming in efforts to learn a foreign tongue.  Most of the people who receive the Fulbright have strong backgrounds in the languages of their country.  Myself, I received the fulbright on the premise that I would make a good-faith effort to study two year's worth of Korean by the time I entered the country.  I have, rather, spent the last nine months forgetting what I managed to cram into 4 months of intense study last year.  

More important than my language capabilities per se, I have certain doubts about my ability to succeed in an Asian culture.  I strongly desire, like many “Amerasians” (funny word, isn't it?  I'm just throwing it in for kicks) to be accepted in Asia as an Asian.  But I know that I may never achieve this fully.  When I explain to my Asian friends that I tend to see myself as more Asian than American, they initially look at me incredulously.  After the incredulity wears off, a certain pity remains, as if to say “Don't you get it?  You'd have it much better as an American in Asia.  You have nothing to gain by being accepted as a watered down Asian, and everything to gain by being accepted as a red-blooded American.”  

On the rare occasion that I am accepted as Asian, I seldom live up to it.  My self-defacement may never be sincere enough.  My desire to express my own opinion may always over-ride my ability to sincerely commit to group convention.  I may always have the desire to strike up a random conversation on the train, to pat people heartily on the back, to show off my mediocre skills, to do things that will give me away as a product of American culture.  

I am to go to Korea as the great-grandson of a famous American humanitarian/missionary.  I will be largely taken care of and assisted by people associated with Christian hospitals there.  My mission is to document the treatment of leprosy in the 20th century Korea.  But in fact my personal priorities are something along the lines of:

1.) Learn Korean language

2.) Learn how to think/behave in Korean society.

3.) get some hospital experience that will help me get started in a career in medicine.

4.) make sincere friends in Korea.  

5.) learn something about my family history.  

I will be allowed to stay in the nurse dormitory of Kwangju Christian Hospital for the first part of my trip.  I'm very nervous about fitting into my surroundings, and I am painfully aware that I will probably stick out like a sore thumb, as somebody who is not working at the hospital and is not fulfilling any basic functions.  I'm worried that, due to my tendency to spend long hours of the day on physical exercise and leisurely study, I may come off as a playboy American tourist.  Perhaps I am more worried that that is exactly what I am.  

In any event, a year is a long time to commit to a single endeavor.  As my 24th year, it should be well over 1% of my life force.  I suppose I expect that when it is over, I will look back with amazement at how fast it all seemed.  And I will wonder that there was ever a time when the lessons I learned there could not be taken for granted.  That is usually the way things go.