Jun 1st, 2001
Spring in Korea
It was warm outside, the first day of Summer. For some reason, Korea had decided to skip Spring in a typically impatient manner and go straight to Summer. Just the past week, the weather had dipped below fifty degrees and two weeks before, there had been a slushy snow descending from the sky. I had just returned to work after a four day vacation.
I was walking home from Taekwondo practice. We had been studying forms for the duration of the practice and consequently, my mind felt a bit more alive than usual. I think the vacation had done me well because I had gone through an entire day without feeling the rage that has seemed to typify my life at ECC, constantly surrounded by rude hyper Korean children.
The walk home takes about ten minutes and in an effort to pass the time, I decided to turn my thoughts towards images of the Washington Redskins. They had just signed a new Wide Receiver and I had been amusing myself by contemplating how he would fit into their long term schemes. Almost like a reflex action, the movement of a muscle, my walk elicited the thought in my mind. But almost immediately, I decided to ignore those thoughts.
I walked up the hill and my body felt terrific. I straightened my back and inhaled the warmish somewhat dirty Seoul air. I was young. I had so much in front of me and before me. Granted, there was a damn good chance that things might not turn out the way I wanted them too, but I didn’t know that yet. All I knew was that I was young and my body was healthy and strong. My mind was in decent shape, especially considering that it had not received much exercise after a year of teaching young children with monosyllabic vocabularies.
I thought about all the older wealthy guys in this world, all the Hugh Hefners out there, with countless bank accounts and countless women. But this thought was intertwined with the idea that I had something that they would never have and that they would give everything that they had up for, youth and vigor.
Hugh Hefner can take all the viagra he wants, but ultimately, he has a wrinkled body and bones that are beginning to take on the same consistency as balsa wood. When I walk, I can feel a bounce in my step and firmness throughout my body. Youth and health is a feeling that I ignore way too often and I realized this now. I don’t know where I will be next year, or ten years from now, but in the present, I have something worth enjoying, and I should pay more attention to it. Stop thinking about trivialities in order to pass the time until I am old and simply enjoy the flavor of my youth.
