평화가 되었다 - 옥경 글

Ilsun Nim – Mother, Fellow Woman and Teacher (2010-02-05-draft)

*This is a contribution to Ilsun Nim’s biography. Each of her four children is asked to contribute to the book.

** Ilsun Nim means “one god”(?) . Mother chose this name to lead her life as her chosen name signifies.

Present

The moment I am writing this short essay, I am turning into 65 years old and preparing myself for retirement from my job. I have also become a grandmother about a year ago. These are important moments of transition in my life, or for that matter in anyone’s life. As I am going through these important moments of my life cycle, I am thinking of Ilsun Nim, my mother, another woman who walked through the same path. What does it like to have children, grandchildren and great grand children? Ilsun Nim has four children, four grandchildren and three great grand children now. It is a great luxury, but important for me to sit down and reflect on Ilsun Nim’s life and the crossing of our lives. Working in another city and traveling every week, I am always running.  I am grateful for this opportunity, particularly at this moment when I am folding up certain activities of my life, which kept me busy and moving on to next phase, which requires looking over my past, present and plan for future.

Prayer

Ilsun Nim used to tell her children that she offers 100 prayers everyday first for the wellbeing of her children and their families, then for reunification of Korea and world peace.  As I was holding my granddaughter recently during the Christmas holiday when she was visiting me, I was overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility for the future of the baby and the young couple- my son and his wife. I thought my responsibilities are over now when my children are grown up and more or less autonomous, but when holding a tiny new life in my arms, I felt my life is starting all over again. However, I am not getting younger!  Who will guide them, protect them? I have seen the fragility of human beings from my own experience and also from the lives of others around me. And then I remembered Ilsun Nim’s 100 prayers and realized why prayer is needed and important. .

She does her prayer in the form of kneeling down, bowing in the form of traditional Korean bowing – a form of respect to the other. Doing this movement one hundred times everyday is an intensive exercise. Her wisdom lies in combining the prayer and exercising her body. Furthermore, she extends her prayer to the world, not just for her own family. If our prayers and well wishes are limited to only our family members and we do not care about the rest of the world, how can we expect a world truly safe, peaceful for our children and family to live in? Many people, even religious institutions and political leaders do not seem to realize this simple fact. This ignorance has been the cause of conflicts and wars throughout human history. I do not deny that all written religious teachings tell us that we should love others as we do ourselves. How many of us practice that teaching in our daily life? Saying or written words are not same as doing it.

I appreciated Ilsun Nim’s wisdom of prayer to extend her protection to her children and to the world beyond and practicing it, combining the practicality of exercise for her body.

Which religion, which god?

You might ask to which god Ilsun Nim prays. When one prays, one is addressing the prayer to some other being beyond self to borrow wisdom and power one does not have. I think she tried all possible gods in all religion. She used to go to Catholic Church, Buddhist temple, Dahn and so on…. After having tried to understand different religion, I think Ilsun Nim’s prayer now is directed to be in alignment with the universe, the energy and wisdom in the universe and nature. For this prayer to be effective, the person who is praying has to be focused with clear mind to enter into the realm of the universal energy, in communion with the energy field and to be a part of it.  The first and essential “sin-qua-nom” condition to be in alignment with the universe is to clear one’s mind, fear, hatred, greed…. as all books of wisdom have told us. In other words, one has to go back to the innocence of a child and live like a child to be able to say “The empror is naked”.

In my understanding, this is the teaching of all religion and Ilsun Nim understood it. There are many contemporary authors in religion and philosophy who have written about this perspective (e.g. “Holiness" by Donald Nicholl, 3^rd edition, 2005; “An Existentialist Philosophy” by J. Macquarrie,1975, xxxx by Echol….”Cinq méditations sur la beauté” -Five Meditations on Beauty by Francois Cheng, 2006).  We know that indigenous people of all continents hold the same spiritual vision of the world. Spinoza (around 1650) was one of the earlier western philosophers who developed this perspective (….) and was excommunicated by the Catholic Church at that time for the position he was taking. I do not think Ilsun Nim has read any of these books. However, she reached the same conclusion as these philosophers, as the result of her search for the right way for a better world. Not only she found the way, but also put it into practice, which is not a simple matter. This is very commendable in her difficult circumstances of being an immigrant, having to work as a laborer at least in the beginning, without language facility to read and listen to the mainstream media and books. Yet she kept on reading in the language that she could (Korean and Japanese) under whatever circumstances.

This is an illustration of her wisdom, tenacity, and commitment to fulfill her responsibility as a fellow human being for a better world. Donald Nicholl (cited above) has the following to say on the responsibility of each human being: “…in all our actions there is both personal and representative. …Each one of us, whether we like it or not, is a teacher in all our actions, each one of which is implicitly proposing itself as a norm for the whole of mankind.” (p.79). Ilsun Nim lives this basic truth everyday. Her life is an example of what Nicholl calls “Daily life as a spiritual exercise” (p.129) and “there is no unbridgeable gulf between the Holy one and anyone, in fact, he is closer to us than we are to ourselves (p.130)”. In fact, Ilsun Nim had the wisdom of understanding that she is the Holy one. This “may seem an arrogant statement, but a sober formulation of basic truth” (p.79).

Crossing of the lives of Ilsun Nim and myself

As I am reflecting on Ilsun Nim’s influence on my life, four areas come to my mind.  They are my preoccupation with social justice, my notion on family and practice, my choice of the doctoral thesis topic, and finally the decision on my career choice and life directions. This is to say that my whole life has been shaped by Ilsun Nim’s influence, some following her path, others in reaction against her. This is surprising, as I think of it, since I left home early (at the age of 25) and my adult life has been formed without close communication with Ilsun Nim nor with my brothers and sister. I used to tell my friends that all my life decisions have been made absolutely by myself, and this statement seems to contradict what I just said above.

Social position of women – My thesis topic

Ilsun Nim always worked (for a paid job) throughout her life. In that sense, she is a “modern” woman for the period when she was born (1920s).  She had a university degree in Japan and she became a teacher in high school in Korea. Then she worked as a manager in her husband’s factory.  When we left Korea, she worked as a seamstress in Brazil, and as a dishwasher in a hospital when we first arrived in Canada. It was a very difficult time for all of us both in Brazil and in Canada. I believe our family migration was the initiative of Ilsun Nim. She believed it was the best for the family and children’s education\future. She did not know what was waiting, out there,  for her and family. We could say it was her courage and innocence. We had to start all over, from scratch, at the bottom of the new society where we arrived. We had to learn the language, had to work to support ourselves. We brought absolutely nothing from Korea other than ourselves.  I still remember the ration of small tiny block of butter (which was so good with the Brazilian bread) distributed to each member of the family. Compared to the relatively comfortable life of a middle class family in Korea, the life in Brazil and then Canada was a true descent in social scale. In Brazil (Sao Paulo), we lived in the district of the poor and prostitutes in the centre of the city. Who could have imagined that a graduate of the Japanese Women’s University would have to work as a dishwasher at her middle age of forties. Migration was a truly “reborn”, erasing the past comfort and privileges.

Ilsun Nim did not mind working as a labourer, but I remember her suffering from rheumatism as the result of overburdening her shoulders carrying heavy dish trays. She was exhausted when she came home in the evening and her shoulders were aching terribly. I did not understand why her husband did not ask her to stop working. Of course, I understood we needed money, but seeing Ilsun Nim suffering was more than I could bear. I felt “humiliated” to watch another woman suffering and her husband not doing anything to elevate her suffering. I think we all worked at least for the first year, except my youngest brother, but I guess what each of the family member was making was not enough. There were quarrels and tension in the house. I saw the situation as the wife being under control of her husband and the woman could not escape from suffering.  I did not understand why Ilsun Nim would not just leave the house and go somewhere else. As I think of it now, where could she have gone?

The social position of women in Indonesia (Sumatra) became the topic of my thesis. I wanted to understand what choice women have when they are in a situation as the one Ilsun Nim was, why women continue to stay in the relationship when the husband does not seem to care about their suffering, how women are socialized to keep the family and why so. Having written the thesis and as I look back now, things are much more complex than the way I imagined. In the West Sumatra where I did my fieldwork, it is women who own land (rice field), although not all women own land. 1\3 of the village population (women) did not own land. Are women freer because they own land, which is a principal economic means in a rural society? Owning land gives women a certain degree of autonomy, but many women do not own land. Both women and men are bounded by social norms and rules. Men are not freer than women. Nobody is really free from social bond. I realized much later that the only way one can be free is “freeing one from oneself”. I think Ilsun Nim took that road.

Notion of family  

After I completed my first year of university, I decided to move out from home to the university residence, since it took me more than two hours to travel back and forth everyday. In addition, I found a summer job, which was close to the university, but rather far from home. What I did not say to my parents when I moved out (and could not possibly to say to them) was that I wanted to be liberated from tension and conflict in the house and see outside world. I swore to myself I would never marry and have a family. I was twenty five. Ilsun Nim told me much later that she cried a lot when I left home. Gradually I came back home less and less.

In the end, I did get married and had two children. Throughout many experimentations and exploration of life, I gradually learned that it is not healthy to live alone, not suit for me. I tasted loneliness and experimented how far I could go. I spent two Christmas holidays by myself at the residence. Other than understanding what loneliness is, I did not see the purpose and meaning of it. I came to a conclusion that dealing with conflict living with a partner and family is better and more meaningful than dealing with loneliness. In the latter part of my life, this conclusion became the motto of my life, i.e., “we came to this world to live together” on which I will talk more below.

It is possible that Ilsun Nim felt the same and stayed with her family. I do not think we discussed this point, but I remember Ilsun Nim saying that children are the main factor why she continued her family setup. So as I think of it now, for Ilsun Nim it is not loneliness but children which kept her with the family. It is ironical to think that Ilsun Nim’s situation and struggle to keep the family together made her child (me) revolt against the institution of family. I revolted at that time against the tyranny of the (family) institution that forced an individual to adhere to it despite of her suffering. I swore to myself I will never adhere to any institution.

Practice of family

At the time of Ilsun Nim’s youth in Korea, one did not have the luxury of  contemplating and deciding if one is going to have a family or not. At my time in Canada, I had options, I weighed them and a decision was taken. In spite of my own decision, it was not easy to carry on the family life with its ups and downs.

In my case, the challenge was compounded with the fact that I was carrying on my doctoral study, which required an extended period of fieldwork (18 months), but first learning Indonesian language before going to the field.  I will talk later about why I chose to study anthropology.  When I returned to Canada after the fieldwork, I had to carry on the analysis of the field data and write the thesis, in parallel to raising two children. The social context of the Quebec Province where I came back from Indonesia was a virulent independence movement, usually called “Quiet Revolution”, of Quebec from the rest of Canada. One of the strategies of the Quebec Independence Movement was the language bill 101, which obliged all the business, schools and individuals to speak French in their social transactions.  Everywhere on the wall in street was written “Yankee, go home”. “Yankee refers to “non-Quebec origin and non-English speaking”.  This is not a space to describe in detail the social context then. Simply summarizing, it (yankee go home) was a slogan to remind those born in Quebec and  French speaking, of their origin and identity, and those who do not speak French that they did not belong there. While I understood what they were doing as an anthropologist, my daily life (as a new arrival) was a hell.

The above description of my individual and social turmoil was weighing heavily on my family life and me. I could not take any more the burdens and stress of daily life. I tried several times to leave Quebec and my family. I undertook this separation step by step. First, I found a job in Montreal and moved there (which is a more cosmopolitan city) with my daughter from the City of Quebec, leaving my husband and son behind. Living alone with my daughter in Montreal was not any easier. It was as stressful as before for different reasons. It seemed my own child became a burden, adding to my stress. Then I suddenly woke up and asked myself: “Will you be really happier if you were all by yourself? Did you come to this world to live by yourself? My answer to these questions was “NO”. I realized one can avoid difficult situations, but avoiding those difficulties does not provide a definite solution.  I asked myself: What is it that you are looking for in life?” I did not have an answer for a long time, but I continued my search. I have more to say on this later.

I think this systematic search for an answer until one is satisfied is something in our family, immediately coming from Ilsun Nim, and before that from her father.

Concern with social justice – my anthropological fieldwork

Ilsun Nim often talked, especially since we moved to Canada, about her father who opted to go to North Korea at the time when Korea was divided into two,  and her adoration of this man and his principles, which remained in my memory as “social justice”. Her father- Lee Jong Man wanted to make money as a businessman and made money to educate and share with the less fortunate. Ilsun Nim also used to talk about a young woman she met in a prison during the Korean War, when she was herself imprisoned. The food distributed to prisoners was not enough and everybody was trying to get or steal more food. This young woman who claimed to be a communist offered her food to the next person. Ilsun Nim said she was very impressed by this person’s gesture.

Although Ilsun Nim often repeated these stories, they did not register in my mind or influenced me as a young person. I was not interested in social issues or justice when I was young. It was in an Indonesian village where I did my anthropological fieldwork (for my doctoral thesis), I saw for the first time injustice with my own eyes and the quest for “social justice” registered in my mind. To an outsider’s eyes, everybody looked same or equally modest, but with time, I could see distinction and discrimination practiced against this group of people.

 The village where I lived and worked had about 1000 population (56 lineages – clans). I learned gradually that 30% of 56 lineages (about 40% in terms of the number of people out of 1000) did not own  land and worked as tenant doing sharecropping or wage labourer, but also they were classified as ”untouchables”, and not allowed to marry the rest of the village people and treated as “minor” or “inferior”. On the other side of the scale, there was the family of “aristocracy” (7% in terms of lineage, but far smaller in terms of the number of people) who enjoyed ascribed privileges – superior social status, owned more than 20% of the rice-field, along with a large space of dry field. mountains and water source. This social stratification and accompanying conflict of interest marks the history of this society as much as any other human societies. The conflict of interests lies, on one side , in their desire to keep their centuries old privilege (which seems “natural”) and the desire of the other side to break the walls of “injustice”. I learned that the status was coded in genealogies of the village population.  It was the first time I became aware of my social origin and its meaning.

I was shocked, but also very sad and disappointed. I asked myself: is this what life is about? I did not wish to embark on that world I discovered for the first time in my life. Then what is alternative? Since that time, I have become obsessed with “social justice”. What is required to build a just society where people do not step over the other because they have less, do not look down upon those who are weaker? My thesis was a careful analysis of a systematic stratification of the village. I have seen it once, and I was seeing it everywhere.

Without my immigrant experience and fieldwork in Indonesia, it is possible that I could have missed the opportunity to become aware of my social origin – land holding class (although my father did not have any land, since the family land was in the hands of the older house). My cousin I met in Canada showed me several (published) volumes of his father’s side genealogy (which is my father’s) he brought from Korea with him.  His genealogy (my father’s genealogy) reminded me of  genealogies I saw in Indonesia and social conflicts around them.

I am beginning to think that our family’s migration out of Korea, my choice of anthropology, anthropological fieldwork in Indonesia are part of my destiny as I was born as a child of Ilsun Nim. Those elements were fabrics woven into my life. By the time, I finished my study and completed the doctoral thesis I was over forty years old. With the knowledge I gained, my quest was: how to live together with others? My awakening on the need of social justice led to the question- how can we live together peacefully? Without social justice, it is not possible. But how? These questions join Ilsun Nim’s search for peace on earth. Everybody agrees that we need peace, but how do we get there? Leading “daily life as a spiritual exercise” or the way in which Ilsun Nim leads her life is one of the roads towards peace, I am convinced. However, it is also imperative that the daily spiritual exercise is accompanied by sharing of the material wealth. One cannot live in peace with the others, when one has to build a wall to protect one’s wealth.

I asked once Ilsun Nim a long time ago if the preoccupation with social justice is genetic in our family, since I saw her preoccupation with justice in many entries of her diary, and I see it in my children. I do not remember how she answered my question. But I know we are all working at it in different ways.

We came to this world to live together

As my age advanced, I became more and more convinced that living together with the family peacefully is the first essential step towards the peace of my mind, humanity and the world. This is easier said than done, but I believe it is the truth. One’s approach to human relationship would be radically different depending on which position one takes: the one where one thinks one can break the relationship and can live alone and the other where one believes that one has to find a common ground to live together allowing space for each other. The focus in the first approach is “self” alone, while in the second, it is self and the other (s). This living together must start with the family, the primary unit of human being’s collective existence. When one takes the first approach, there is no space for the other. On the other hand, when one takes the second approach, one would make a space for the other at whatever cost.

When “the other” is a friend or somebody one likes, it is simple. But when it is an individual, people, nation which one dislikes, hates, it is not easy, appears almost impossible. One thinks:”I am on the right path, I have the right to occupy the space”. However, we often forget that the other side thinks the same. Who will judge who is right? Who has more right? No one can make this judgement, not even god. Therefore, we are obliged to take the second approach of making space and living together with “the other(s)”. My awareness on this point was awakened with my struggle with my family of origin and then my family of creation.

Recognition of “the other”

My obsession for understanding “the other” came very early when we left Korea. With the cultural and language difference, communication with other people was very difficult.  How does one communicate that one means well and understand the other when one does not speak the same language and the pattern of communication is different. To answer these questions, I chose to study anthropology to make sense of immigration experience and “the other”. I never had an opportunity to explain to Ilsun Nim and my brothers and sisters why I studied anthropology and how this choice impacted on my life. This – understanding and recognizing the other – is a major problem in the current global world. My migration experience leaving Korea at a young age is at the bottom of my search for understanding the other and including them in my map.

My world has become much larger and has a space for “the other”. My anthropological study opened up my eyes to complexities of human life, issues of inequalities and need of social justice.  This is my response to Ilsun Nim’s question (occasionally thrown to us): “Was it the right thing that we migrated out of Korea?”

Meaning of life - actions

To find a meaningful solution, one has to understand what problem one is trying to solve. So what was my problem?  Was it finishing my doctoral thesis, my husband and family set up, finding a job?  As I think of this period much later, when I have finished my thesis, kept my family together and found a job, none of these was the problem, although they were real problems and pressure on my daily life then. I realized my problem was in me, not to know “how to deal with myself, relate to the world outside and give meaning to my life which made sense to me”. Or put it in another way, I did not grasp the purpose of life. I have taken many actions in life: learned many languages, studied and obtained a degree, created a family and gave birth to children and raised them, working and earning enough money which allowed a fairly comfortable life. They are all novel actions on their own and many of them gave me joy and happiness. However, what do they add up to? Is a life a collection of actions, is this all there is?

I am not condoning here “actions” we take in life. I am not saying one has to sit still and do nothing. Actions are important part of human life. We think and express in words, and act to materialize those. However, actions – moving and doing things for good reasons- alone did not give me a full satisfaction. At that point of my life, I came to a conclusion that what matters is “how” one does the action that action is in alignment with what I say.

Career choice and direction of my life

Upon completing my thesis, the next action I had to take was to make a choice for the kind of work (and earning). I was offered two types of jobs:

Teaching at a university and research work at the Canadian Federal government. After a long deliberation, I chose the second. I spent 20 years at the university studying and I had the choice of staying there, now teaching. However, I wanted to see a different world and also allow me more free time to explore the world and myself. An important part of the university job involved writing and publishing. I wanted to leave my mind free to become close to my children, which I could not do when I was writing my thesis.

As I look over the pattern of my decision making, I am strucked by a close paralle between Ilsun Nim and myself.  Ilsun Nim always pushed her boundaries and tried to discover new things, world. I have been doing the same thing, first choosing to study anthropology after finishing BA in mathematics and plan of becoming a high school teacher. It was the beginning of choosing “unknown” future rather the known. I chose an “unknown” territory (person) for my husband; chose “unknown” world of Indonesia for fieldwork; went to Quebec following my husband, again unknown world for me at that time; then the career of a public servant for which I was not prepared at all, but learned a lot. In making all these choices, the point of reference for me was “how to make sense of my life?”

Action - Doing it well

Ilsun Nim told us repeatedly when we were young, in the following way: “It is not important what kind of work you do, but it is important to do it well. For instance, when you clean a room, you should visit every corner of the room and clean thoroughly every sing dust” She said she learned this when she was at university. I drew a lesson from this teaching that doing well what we do every moment of our life with full care and effort whatever one does is a way of attributing meaning to life. I discovered this approach gave me much more satisfaction than doing many things with less care because there is no time to do it all. Different teachings and approaches appeal to different people. I drew this lesson from Ilsun Nim.

Action – Alignment between saying and doing

I have spent almost 35 years of my life studying and writing. I spent another 25 years working and writing. I have realized, along the road, that if I do not practice what I say or write, it is not worthwhile talking about it.  If  I do not practice and just say, it is what we call ”a lie”. We have infinite opportunities in our daily life to put into practice some of immensely wise sayings and teachings different civilizations have produced. There is no shortage of teachings, but practice.  It is up to each of us to put them into practice. I am struggling everyday to be in alignment with my saying and action, however small or big they are. I think we have to become teachers for ourselves, not for others.

Meaning of life – inner void

In spite of chain of actions I have completed, I was not happy in my inner self. There was somewhere inside me a void. For a long time I thought this void was due to lack of affection from my mother that I felt I did not receive. It is possible that I am the only one among four siblings to have felt this way.  In spite of the same teaching and up brining of the parents, they touch each of the children in different ways and are interpreted differently by them.

My mother worked always and she was not home during daytime as far as I remember since my adolescence period. I missed mother’s touch, small affections such as braiding my long hair before going to school, which my friend’s mother did. I spoke about this to mother many times and her response was always she loved me as well as other children very much. However, those words did not fill the void in my heart. Until I was fifty-five years old (I think), I tried different ways of getting “small affection” (Janjeong) from mother to fill the hole in my heart. Then I realized whatever I was looking for would not come from mother and decided to generate it myself to fill the void. I decided to give what I was looking for from mother to my children. I did not know whether it would work, but I thought I have nothing to lose. I think it worked for me. The hole in my heart was gradually filled with my own action of “giving” and intimacy developed through giving. I do not know exactly what it did to my children, but I know it did not do harm to them. They just asked me why I was always around them all the time. I realize now that what I was searching for was touching my inner self, but I could not get there by myself. It had to be through other beings, in this case it happened to be my children.

One example of my “giving” – an approach I developed to express my love and care for children- was preparation of Sunday family meals. There were periods when it was difficult to talk to my children during their adolescence. Family meals were easier way of getting together and talk about happenings in their life. I put all my efforts and affection in buying fresh material and preparing the meal. It gave me a great pleasure touching the fresh ingredients and cooking them, then serving and eating together on a nicely laid out table.  It gave a pleasure to my family as well and my children could see, through these meals, mother’s affection and care. Through cooking I was able to relieve my creative urge, in addition to a pleasant anticipation of giving joy to those who will eat them. Cooking is a spiritual experience. While preparing a meal, one starts a communion with the nature (fresh ingredients one is touching) and the people who will eat them.  Since then, cooking has become one of my communication tools, spiritual exercise and therapy.

I blamed mother for a long time (for almost all of my life) for not giving me what I wanted (intimacy with myself). Of course, mother gave me many things (material and moral guidance, care and affection), but those are not the things I wanted. But she could not have given it to me because she did not know what I was looking for and nor did I. Eventually, I had to find out myself, reaching out to others to reach me and be liberated from self, i.e., no longer focussed on self.

I have caused much pain to Ilsun Nim by accusing her not giving me what I wanted. However, she was patiently standing there waiting that I found a solution and made a peace in me. Although the process I went through was my own choices and devices, I think I learned the wisdom from Ilsun Nim in finding practical devices and solutions facing problems and difficulties in life. I wonder if this incessant search for meaning is genetic. Anyway, Ilsun Nim showed us the way.

Meaning of life – closing the circle – inner tranquility

I am inclined to conclude that the meaning of life is not something out there somewhere. I am not even sure if life is supposed to have meaning.  Today, I am completing 65 years of my existence. I cannot say I have found a meaning of life. However, I can say that my life makes sense to me, in the sense that I understand my struggle and feel compassionate about it.  This understanding gives me peace of mind.  An added factor is the recent return of  Ilsun Nim back to Korea. Seeing her on Korean soil relieved me from an unexplainable, never expressed existential anxiety. Her move also created an opportunity for me as well as for her other children to reconnect among them, reconnect with Ilsun Nim and the country where they originated.  A fertile ground is being prepared to build on it something unexpected, something more embracing at an individual and collective level – reunion of the family, reunion of Korea....  Another new element in my life is that I have become a grandmother, which helps me to understand  Ilsun Nim’s prayer and prayers of many women on earth.  Holding a grandchild in my arms made me realize the extent of my limited ability to protect the new lives joining the humanity. Peace on earth is possible not just by prayers of Ilsun Nim or mine, but also by those  of  each of the humanity.   My grand-daughter, who will put her feet on Korean soil someday, helped me to see it. Ilsun Nim showed the way. A tribute is to Ilsun Nim’s wisdom and courage.