DEPARTURE THERAPY

In exactly 2 weeks, I will be closing a chapter of my life in Seoul. Perhaps the most difficult part of getting ready to say goodbye has been mentally preparing to part ways with my apartment villa where I have resided just a little over 4 years. The most memorable moments are — The Costco runs which inevitably evolved to "watermelon bonding time" in our living room, the casual roommate wind-downs with Gina and Joanne (some moments I will never forget)...and of course, the crying, the prayers, and yes, even the fights with friends who have made this journey ridiculously satisfying.

I don't know how to spend these last two weeks without any reoccurring regrets once I leave, but I am determined to mark my final moments with upmost intentionality. Among other important life questions, I am asking myself how I can most meaningfully part ways with a city that has been monumental to my 20's, and with people who have in one way or another changed my life. It will be rough. And while there is no doubt in my mind that planning helps ease internal tensions, I reckon that the best moments come — I hate to admit it — unplanned. Two weeks! I plan to blog through the days to come, but other than that I have no idea how it'll all pan out. Regardless, come at me! (I think) I'm ready.

DREAMS

Earlier this summer, I read a book called "The Alchemist" that deeply impacted me. It resonated in my heart to such a degree that a force of courage led me to make calculated risks, and just several months later, jump. At the end of 2016, I will be leaving this city — home for the past five and half years — and it is with great excitement, expectation, and bone-chilling nerves that I look to my last month in Seoul, Korea. I hope you read this masterfully written introduction and get thinking.

"I remember receiving a letter from the American publisher Harper Collins that said that: 'reading The Alchemist was like getting up at dawn and seeing the sun rise while the rest of the world still slept.' I went outside, looked up at the sky, and thought to myself: 'So, the book is going to be published in English!' At the time, I was struggling to establish myself as a writer and to follow my path despite all the voices telling me it was impossible. 

And little by little, my dream was becoming a reality. Ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million copies sold in America. One day, a Brazilian journalist phoned to say that President Clinton had been photographed reading the book. Some time later, when I was in Turkey, I opened the magazine Vanity Fair and there was Julia Roberts declaring that she adored the book. Walking alone down a street in Miami, I heard a girl telling her mother: 'You must read The Alchemist!'  

The book has been translated into fifty-six languages, has sold more than twenty million copies, and people are beginning to ask: What's the secret behind such a huge success?  

The only honest response is: I don't know. All I know is that, like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling. What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our own dream.  

Why?  

There are four obstacles. First: we are told from childhood that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there.  

If we have the courage to disinter dream, we are then faced by the second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.  

Once we have accepted that love is a stimulus, we come up against the third obstacle: fear of the defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: “Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.” We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.  

I ask myself: are defeats necessary? Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.  

So, why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people?  

Because, once we have overcome the defeats—and we always do—we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life. Each day, each hour, is part of the good fight. We start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure. Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.  

Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day. Then comes the fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we fought all our lives.  

Oscar Wilde said: 'Each man kills the thing he loves.' And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal—when it was only a step away.  

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here." Paulo Coelho, November 2002.

......See you in 2017, LA.

SUMMER 16'

Hello! It's been a while, yes? I've been busy living in the summer and through the summer, perhaps much too engaged to document it. Summer was action-packed and FUN. It filled me to the brim, made me laugh, love, and even cry.  It stretched me to receive more, to grow, and to give myself in ways that were only possible when...simply put, unapologetically myself.  That kind of expansion comes when you put yourself out there among the world of colorful differences, when you take some risks, and openly lean in to (more often than not frightening) new experiences. It's been really, really amazing. 

Now that the dust has settled and September has rolled in, the pangs of nostalgia have officially kicked in. (Anyone else feel the '그리움' that September brings?) I thought it would be a good time to sit down at this open-view cafe in Hapjeong and reflect. And so with moments captured in time, here's summer 2016.

1.  MMCA photo exhibit in Korea. The MMCA is my favorite museum in Seoul and it has left some deep impressions on me this spring/summer season. I once used to believe that photography detached me from real human experiences (and, someone once told me in high school that taking photos was being vain and fake — nonsense). This exhibit brought healing to my soul and inspired me to continue to snap away at the every day, the extraordinary and the mundane!

2. Spaces. Yesterday I went to explore cafe spaces in Seongsu and was substantially impressed by how humans could design and manufacture a room that would fill me with rip-roaring inspiration. Admittedly, the only threads of consistency of the summer were cafes like these. (The one pictured above is in Wicker Park, Chicago)

3. Giving thanks. My grandma occasionally would say that happiness and gratitude are proportional. This summer, I intentionally practiced gratitude, and to that I can say, I am certainly very, very happy.

4.  Busan. Crossed off #6 on my summer bucket list when I took the KTX to my favorite city in Korea, not to work per usual but to play. The ocean was alright this time, but the company was nice.

5.  Rooftop shenanigans. Not a single summer goes by without hitting up the Seoul rooftop with friends, music, and food. No grilling this summer, but for this night, pizza was the most excellent choice. That, and, I'm ever so thankful for this bunch who I had the privilege of growing to know more this year. 

6.  Seoul Searching. The longer I stay in Korea, the more eagerly I desire to learn my cultural heritage. So much so that I found myself aimlessly meandering through Hanoak Village and Samchungdong without a single complaint of the heat. Mosquitos and alarming steam aside, it was all killer vibes.

7. Yangjae Flower Market. Crossed off another one on the summer bucket list as I walked home a bad girl with a mint chocolate chip ice cream craving fulfilled and the most beautifully arranged bouquet of flowers I've yet to get my hands on. Satisfaction.

8. Thailand. The only way I can describe waking up to this morning view on my left and my best friends on my right...pure bliss. To that, you add ice-immersed coconut water, endless pad thai, beautiful waters, and endless hours of laughter, and you'll have one content woman. Definitely one of the highlights of my summer.

9. The Little Prince. I've always considered life lived in hopeless denial to that which one was designed an exceedingly distressing thought. This little book is a seed of hope to the human soul, to those who may have forgotten what it's like to live fully.

10. Lessons on loving the self. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves. -Brene Brown

JEJU

Photo Diary May 26th - May 29th

Traveling always provides the richest space for reflection because there is, to a certain degree, the absence of grownup realities. And in duration, the novel scents of sea water and ocean views blur out the messiness and/or the weight of real human life. I don't know if that's a cop-out to adulthood... but Jeju was dreamy in that regard. The weekend felt rich and full as I ventured out with absolutely no plans at all, except for — of course — good food, nice drives in our mint Kia (yass), and unfeigned quality time with a friend.

What I know about myself that I didn't know before this trip is, I am driven by trying to understand, in earnest: What makes human life meaningful? The grandeur of the sea is often the greatest trigger to this question. In Jeju, I stood face to face with the waters on countless occasions, and each time I could pat down the idea that life's virtue certainly has something to do with the depth of our relationships. And as such, for me, I recognized that connection has undergirded the richness and significance that I sense so strongly these days in my late twenties. Adulthood is more often than not an arm and a leg, but it is the opportunities of getaways like these that allow us to be adult and childlike simultaneously. It was perfect.

And I leave you with this: 

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, 'Do it again'; and the grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." -GK Chesterton

MAY

May was odd, congenial, and very short-lived. Aside from the obvious benefits of the pre-summer delights, I've entered the month of June feeling a little cheated because May came and fled too soon. In the past week or two, I've unknowingly meandered down a twilight zone where I have been living by day-to-day instincts. What's right? What's wise? What's best? It is by grace alone because I have unwittingly chucked my life manual out the window this month. Grace — it's been the hefty theme this season, and my goodness life takes you on some detours.

I think that's besides the point though. When I look back in my journal, a lot has happened. Nothing I had planned for, obviously. Last month, I had planned to follow through on a series of media projects, yet youtube never made it out of my camera, and blogposts never have been released. If not within a time frame of inspirational propulsion, ideas pass and remain in draft history...forever. On the flip side, a ton of unexpected things came my way — namely friendships, traveling (Jeju!), and some farfetched surprises. I'm currently in a spin as to how I've ended up here, but here I am, dazed, tad disoriented, yet excited.

If anything, last month I've recognized the depth to which I treasure my relationships. Community is foundational. I'm thankful for the people who have been planted alongside me here, in Seoul. I've been absorbing, working on things to the point of having to mentally recalibrate what is normal — or at least trying not to be so judgmental towards what I don't know. (Sorry for being vague) And in the process, I have people who challenge me, love me, and ask me questions to keep me accountable, sane, and always laughing... always.

Anyways, I get a hunch of a hunch that summer is going to be amazing. Even life changing perhaps. Keep your eyes open and hearts ready, step out and lets make it wild. 

INSTALIFE

APRIL 2016

1 ll Creative Mornings Seoul       2 ll Friday Work Group

3 ll Election Day       4 ll MMCA 

5 ll Wander Lust      6 ll Tent Making on a Roof

7 ll Van Gogh Exhibit + Roomie       8 ll Seoul Cherry Blossom

9 ll Pick-me-up       10 ll Breakfast Spread

SEOUL ROOFTOP SERIES

And so it begins — rooftop liberty. Last wednesday was a nice break for Seoul citizens as election day rolled around. And with the license for leisure came the perfect afternoon. What was so perfect about it you ask? The tent on the rooftop (yes, a tent you guys), music, friends, and food... namely, hot cheetos in a bowl. 10 out of 10. 

Spring used to feel like war to me. The resistance to June's warmth would forge dreadful skies and erratic chills, and I would drag my feet through the slump until summer came around. It recently dawned on me that that was Chicago, and this is Seoul. And springtime in this city has painted a rather radiant sky and a happier Mary Koh. 

What filled my cup more than anything that day was the intentionality circulating in our midst. We are often busy, much too preoccupied with work and getting on with the business of our late-twenties. Yet for an afternoon's moment, there was a pause. Time had halted, thoughts were raw, and our taste buds were activated by the sweet indulgence of ice-cream + persimmon, while tunes enhanced the cityscape on Kyungridan. When was the last time you trumped familiarity with an honest question? It's less about meeting new people and more about digging deep (though this afternoon consisted of both). Familiarity kills curiosity. Comfort is nice, but I would much rather opt out of mindless, glorified "quality-time." 

All to say this — Get to know ya peeps.

And so, in these spring moments where warmth unfolds, I hope to see novelty in what is already known. No matter how sensational your relationships currently stand, there is more. Back to the basics, if you will — of love, of looking at someone in the straight in the eye, prying, and yes of course, the theme that protrudes yet again and again and again.... delight.

April 13th, 2016, Kyungridan Street