it goes on.
-Robert Frost
"How are you?"
As of now (April 2011), the most challenging question for me is "How are you?" This is because it requires the questioner to understand the extraordinarily complicated context of my situation. I can simply say "Fine, and you?" and thereby give out no information. In order to provide a more truthful answer, I'll have to hold the questioner for a long account which is certainly outside the intention of the casual greeting. So I write it out here in hope that it will serve as a fuller answer which I cannot adequately deliver in person.
Instead of "Fine, thank you"...
On the surface, I'm a young man who hopes to continue learning in graduate school. I'm not the brightest student (as constantly reminded in my career so far), but I have enough mental faculty, a strong will, and superfluous endurance to push my way through. People hence rationally conclude that I'm well on my way to further achievement.
Yet my young age not withstanding, I've already been battered by life too much to take a naturally carefree attitude. My parents, while I love them for what they are, proved to be a very negative influence on me. My mother is a dark, resentful, yet boastful person who even directly threatened me with a thought of suicide, and my father is a well-meaning but greedy individual whose treatment of people other than family or friends horrified me. In fact, part of my motivation to study abroad was to liberate myself from risking the continuation of their traits, so I may be independent of them in every sense. Throughout my study in the States, I had to walk a delicate line to survive on my own, escaping from the bogus school and host family in Idaho, alienating other Koreans in my persistence to learn, and cajoling my reluctant father to financially support my study by winning scholarships. Several times I nearly died, and there were triumphs and defeats.
There was a quiet hope that all these struggles would lead to some good ending. Having rushed through college in three years, my graduation in this coming May seemed like one.
Instead, on a clear Saturday in January, a pickup truck sped through the red light and rammed my car in full speed. My car was severed in half. It is a miracle that I wasn't killed, because the front part was severed right up to the front of my face, which was saved by the airbag. Furthermore, the pickup driver later lied that it was I who had driven in red (presumably judging by my Asian look that she had a good chance of beating me, a hopefully inarticulate foreigner), so I had to suppress my anger and fight against her insurance company with cool logic. I won, thankfully.
But something happened within a week that made me wish to be run over by a truck everyday, if by doing so I could avoid it.
My father suddenly lost sight completely. He had found out last year that he was a victim of what's called Evans Syndrome. A victim suffers decrease in red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, or any combination of them. Platelets were the main problem for my father. It appears a low platelet level caused internal bleeding nearby the eyes and brought the blindness. At first, a surgery was supposedly all he needed to recover vision. But ironically, it could not be performed unless there were enough platelets in the body, so my father had to (well!) just "blindly" wait. Now the story is rather deterministic; the situation got worse in the waiting to the point of no possible recovery. After three months of futile struggle, enormous suffering, and fear, nothing has come out, and he is now out of hospital and coping himself with the prospect of life as a blind (all the while having to take care of platelets lest he should die). Unlike in the States, the environment in Korea is hostile and merciless to the handicapped because the society has no room for them. In his effort to accept going from being treated a doctor to being treated a legless blind (my father also doesn't have one leg), he is having a hell of a time as I write this page.
Among other implications, one is that there is no more income to our family. That's why I'm very much hoping to find full aid in grad school next year, wherever I end up going.
Invincible Happiness
But, having had my heart broken daily for three months at this point, I'm slowly regaining the positive sense of life. How? I don't know. Partly it's the blessing of time that erodes any emotion eventually. However, there's more to it. I've come to realize that I'm able to "feel happy" right now if I'm determined to do so. This ability is in my reach at all time. Maybe I'm genuinely unlucky (the pickup truck, like a random dart, was doomed to hit any car in the traffic, but it had to be me; Evans Syndrome is an extremely rare disease, but it had to be in my father). That is, discounting Murphy's Law, probabilistically speaking there are bound to be some who are more unlucky than others, and I may be one of them. As an illustration, it is very rare that you get both ones when you throw two dice, but it's expected to happen in 36 throws.
Nevertheless, as long as my mind doesn't reside in misfortune, as long as I choose to smile, there can be a tempest of fire swirling around me and I can still feel I'm having a good, relaxing time. I'll simply do everything I can with the best effort I've got, and watch the outcome as if I'm watching a movie or playing a game. I've again found that happiness (and unhappiness, for that matter) is always in me. I only need to find it. In this way, my happiness is truly invincible, and I'm truly glad I have it now.
"And you?"
