Someday

“In youth, one does not know youth, and when loving, one does not see love.”

The opening lyrics of the song <Someday>, which I sometimes take out and listen to like a photograph from a drawer when I happen to think of it, always feel new. Just as a novel written by an outstanding writer with truth feels new every time it is read. A good work, like a “Russian doll,” has meaning within meaning, and another meaning hidden within that, and those meanings, if only discovered without any further explanation, should become intuitive understanding like a revelation.

In youth, one does not know youth. Because one has never not been young.

When loving, one does not see love. Because love is like molecules or elements that make up a colorless and odorless existence like air or water.

What if one knew youth in youth? Perhaps it is impossible for anyone, but what if it were so? First of all, many mistakes stemming from the vigor of youth could be reduced. The short period of youth would have been used more preciously and wisely. And above all, one would have become better at understanding the “position of those who are not young.” One would have been able to understand someone who, intoxicated by youth and living as if it would last forever, becomes an old person who is neither very wise nor has any respectable aspects at the moment of realization that time has passed. But in youth, one does not know youth, so there is no one among young people who can understand such a thing. There may be some, but it would be fair to say that there are none.

What if one could see love when loving? Perhaps one would have proposed without hesitation or calculation, would have completely lost interest in physical relationships that are not love, and as a result, all areas of life would have had richer value overall. Of course, there would be no need to live with past love buried in one’s heart. But because love is not seen when loving, people inevitably make various absurd mistakes to each other, and because of that, love eventually passes by “undiscovered.” Leaving only big and small wounds. So, these days, people look for a marriage partner who can sew up the wounds of the heart like thread and wrap them like bandages to make them invisible, instead of someone who can open their heart and show everything inside. That can also be love. Because there are “many forms” of love. But that love, too, will probably not be seen well when loving.

These days, when social distancing like dog training due to the coronavirus is in full swing, people say things like this: “I think I now know the preciousness of ‘daily life.’” When they could travel freely, they did not know the preciousness of travel, and when they could freely gather with acquaintances and tilt soju glasses, they did not know the preciousness of such gatherings. When they enjoyed daily life, they did not see daily life. (Just like youth or love.) So, everyone seems to have the mind that if “daily life” is given again as before, they will travel more diligently with family, friends, and lovers than before, and participate more diligently in gatherings with acquaintances.

But the thought should not stop there. Just as someone who has come to know youth in youth can come to understand “those who are not young,” shouldn’t those who have come to know daily life be able to understand “those who have not had daily life”? Even before the pandemic arrived, there were people around us who could not even dream of things like travel. There were quite a few people who skipped meals to save living expenses, let alone gatherings with acquaintances. How would people who say “I didn’t know overseas travel was so precious” or “I didn’t know gatherings were so precious” appear in their eyes? Wouldn’t people to whom overseas travel has always seemed like a story from another country hope that the pandemic would continue forever, or that the world would end with a much more serious pandemic? And can we blame them for having such a wish? They were probably once middle class but had a family member get cancer, suffered business failure, or went bankrupt due to fraud. Since then, no matter how much they “tried,” it is highly likely that they could not enjoy what people enjoy as “daily life” until they died. Isn’t it time to think once again about the “daily life” that we have enjoyed, treating the misfortune of people who were simply unlucky as if it were a forgotten object stuffed away in a corner?

What we should think about with the “loss of daily life” is “people whose daily life was originally lost.” The beginning should be to have the thought: since it is so painful for me to lose my daily life, how painful it must have been for people who have lived without anything called daily life all along.

Recently, I was embarrassed to hear Yeon-mi Park, a North Korean defector, say in an interview with Jordan Peterson that Koreans do not look around them, so North Korean defectors starve to death in the middle of Seoul. It was a YouTube video with over a million views. Just as a family that leaves family members to starve to death in the house cannot be a family, a people that leaves its members to starve to death in the country cannot be a people. We have all lost our qualifications as citizens. They may argue that they did not know about the incident. Then what will you do now that you know to prevent the recurrence of the same thing? If you do nothing, such a person cannot be called a citizen. Isn’t it too obvious? The future of a country where such people are citizens.