Our Seoulful Life

This morning

I sat with five friends. We sat in silence, and in meditation, in community, and in conversation. My friends Lindsay and Jason’s campus-apartment living room, where we had all gathered, had that Good Vibes Only feel. That is not to say that everything that we were talking about or feeling was all “good.” It is to say that we were a group of six who were holding space for one another and ourselves to sift through the many thoughts and emotions and energy that was surfacing as Jason guided us through an inquiry.

I am new to this group, this being my second time attending the inquiry session and if you ask me to explain what it is the best response I have right now is “A safe, meditative, reflective sharing of space.”

Last year my new friends and colleagues pointed out how much I say the word “space” and indeed here I go again today. I like space — sharing space, creating space, finding new spaces, exploring internal and external spaces.

Before we all experience semantic satiation with the word space I will get to one of my larger takeaways from the inquiry session today. As one of my friends was sharing some of what she has been processing this week, she quoted Debie Thomas’s Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories:

“Sometimes, accepting what we haven’t chosen is sacred work.”

When Thomas writes this, she is reflecting on John 13:3-15. How these words were useful to me is outside of the context in which Thomas is writing and I am going to be a bit roundabout in getting to why and how the words struck me.

Six weeks ago

I was in Tokyo for a conference. It took about three hours to find myself enamored with the city. The chicken skewers with all of the yummy sauces with the Asahi beer with the aesthetic of a much-quieter-than-expected street with the strangers who were so eager to help us even when we didn’t ask with the early cherry blossoms

and the blue blue sky and then the sushi with old friends and the soba noodle soup with more Asahi and the city-so-safe-a-six-year-old-could-navigate-the-bus-alone. And the 7-Eleven. Seriously, the 7-Elevens. So many new snacks and bento boxes. It was all of it for me.

“I love Tokyo",” I thought again and again throughout my five-day stay. “How cool would it be to live here! I could totally see it.”

Three Weeks Ago

Dae-Han and I were on our first international trip together. Arising well-before dawn, we had landed in Da Nang, a coastal city in the middle of Vietnam, at 10 am. As soon as we debarked the plane, we began breathing in the warm, humid ocean air and tripdorphins (the endorphins that kick in when I travel) flooded my system. Looking over at Dae-Han, holding his hand, I could feel a grin stretch across my face. “Are you excited?” I asked him, the last syllable of my question reaching towards the hazy sun. Smiling and laughing a bit at my giddiness he replied, “Yep.”

It took me no more than three hours to fall in love with Da Nang and its neighboring city, Hội An. It was the warm ocean and the fresh seafood and the open-air neighborhood coffeeshops and the phở and reading books at the beach and then at the pool and the fresh coconuts and the gritty sand under my feet and the grit on the street where people walk with smiles on their faces and the chill vibes of the slower life with the fresh fruit from the vendors that scooters speed by boarded by four family members at a time and walking everywhere with Dae-Han’s hand in mine as we shared space in a new place. Together.

Two Weeks Ago

We flew from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. We were spending twelve hours in the city to see Ceci and Carlos — kind of wild, flying in for less than a day; the life of international school teachers is one of #privilege.

I had been twice before, but this was Dae-Han’s first trip to Vietnam’s largest city. Our twelve hours were spent sipping champagne at Ceci and Carlos’s beautiful apartment, eating tacos at a hip restaurant, and then toasting to friendship at a speakeasy. It was some kind of dream.

I knew I loved HCMC from my previous visits, and walking down the street with Ceci, Carlos, and Dae-Han, once again I found myself thinking …

“How cool would it be to live in Vietnam? The vibe is so nice, the people are so kind, the flowers are always blooming. I could totally see it.”

It’s a little bit bananas that changing schools when I was thirteen years old put me into a depressive state for the better part of a year and now I am living in Korea with a sense that I could live just about anywhere in the world.

This early evening

I sit on my couch accompanied by the sound of passing cars outside and vapor puffing out of the essential oil dispenser beside me. Dae-Han is gone, on an overnight retreat. I have lived alone for most of my adult life, but I now find that I miss Dae-Han as soon as he is gone for one of his quick trips.

In this solitude, with the sun casting shadows of our monstera plant onto the couch, I come back to Thomas’s words. “Sometimes, accepting what we haven’t chosen is sacred work.”

In three months from today, Dae-Han and I will say the vows we are writing for one another as my dad officiates our wedding ceremony. These vows are a choice. Co-creating a life together is a choice. I am in love with Dae-Han, and I make the choice to be loving towards him each day as he does to me. If all of this has been rooted in my own mindful choices, why am I so drawn to Thomas’s words?

Thomas’s words connected to something my therapist offered me this week. Tracy pointed out that while Dae-Han and I have agreed that Seoul is a long-term home for us, I continue to consider living in a dozen other places. I do not think that fantasizing about various scenarios is inherently harmful, but Tracy’s point was that perhaps it could keep me from really leaning into our life here in Seoul, that I could be holding back from a fuller immersion into what we can create in Korea. So when I heard Thomas’s words, what struck me most was “accepting” “choice” and “sacred work.”

I am in an interesting and challenging and beautiful space right now. One in which life is no longer about my own personal agenda or whims. In previous relationships, there often came a point where considering combining my life with someone else’s became too scary, sometimes altogether frightening. This moment feels nothing like that. Because what it is is sacred. The connection Dae-Han and I have with one another, the way we love one another, it is sacred. And I think I am now beginning to understand what it means to then engage in the sacred work of building the Us. With that building comes accepting that some of my vision for life will shift in both small and more pronounced ways.

This moment

I do not have a particularly witty way to close today’s post. I think I just want to end with gratitude — for people that consciously or inadvertently offer me wisdom to consider, and for the man with whom I get to run, bike, and build with for the rest of our lives. It took me such a short time to fall in love with you, and so I can picture us together in any city, especially Seoul. #OurSeoulfulLife