Today is November 25, 2010. It’s Thanksgiving Day. I never thought too much about missing the holidays until now. It's hard to admit, but I'm feeling a bit of homesickness today. And I suppose it wouldn’t be too hard to admit, as long as I had someone around. It’s different this time, though. I’m across the world from everyone I call family, and the sole emotional pull I get from anyone is when I show my students the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving video clip I downloaded from the Internet. They laugh, almost fall asleep, and then barely wake up enough for me to review the pervious weeks lesson. It didn’t really hit me—the homesickness—until I tried to explain to them that everyone in my family is gathering for a feast, while I am here. Maybe it’s not homesickness, though; maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s that I actually am sick with some sort of tonsil infection, and got sent home early from school today, putting me alone in the apartment. Or, maybe it’s that I am now writing while drinking a Budweiser and smoking a Marlboro Light, alone, while having some sort of tonsil infection. Or, maybe it’s just the sum of all of the above. On the plus side, at least I’m writing in my blog.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the holidays. I’ve always known they’re about family coming together, putting away our differences, and telling each other how much we love one another. But, as a kid, I never really gave in to any of that. To me it was always the delicious food, the occasional perfect present, and getting to fight with cousins as much as possible. If, by chance, I didn’t get the present I thought was applicable to my immediate interest in life, I would share my brother’s, even if he didn’t want me to. The holidays were no more to me than that. Parents got drunk and laughed, kids got pissed and threw toys. But as I’ve started to become an adult—and I know everyone is rolling their eyes trying to believe these words are actually come from me at free will—I think I am realizing the actual importance of the family unit.
When I say family unit, I don’t necessarily mean blood relatives. In college, my friends and I had a family. We called each other brother and sister. We fought with each other like brother and sister. We cared and loved for one another like true brothers and sisters do. And this is the same as any family of kin. As long as people recognize one another as individual parts that together to make up the whole unit, then one can call it whatever needs be. This, I think, is what we do as we become adults. We start to detach from our parent family, first as rebellion of the simple idea of family, and holidays because it’s boring and lame. Then, once one alone, they realize how nice it is to be wanted, to be a part of a whole. Then, we start to make our own family bonds, whether with friends all starting anew, or by joining another family all together. Then, as time goes on, we start to establish that family with concreteness. Some need it to be official, in terms of the governmental recognition. They wed, make their vows, hang their certificate, and wear their rings. Some need less, and simply make their vows to one another, excluding the governmental eye—whichever works best. Then, if we are lucky, it grows from that seed to the next. Children are born, brothers and sisters find their counterpart, more children are made, and they all grow up together, making one big family. The fact is simple. It is the human condition to gather.
This has happened to me, here, in Korea. There is a strong bond between a few good people I’ve found. We come from all walks of life, but we are all teachers this year in Korea. The weekends are always our “holidays”. We fight, love, and nag with one another until Sunday’s end. Then we say, “I love you. See you next week.” The weekdays are funny. It’s more of a dream life than real life. We drudge through the job—it’s not bad, but it’s not the most exciting job in the world either. We are all more or less scattered throughout the country, so it’s hard to spend time with anyone Monday through Friday. They point is simple: we are alone during the week, and we yearn for each other by the time weekend comes along. This, in a sense, is my Korean family.
I recently watched the movie Into the Wild for probably the 5th time in my life. It’s cheesy to name job such a stereotypical movie, but it’s a really good one. The quote you get at the very end is something like this, “Happiness is only real when shared.” I find much truth in this statement.
