This past week I've been working on an essay for the program that brought me to Korea. I was two pages into the essay (I had already gushed about my first visit to Korea in June of 2009 with Devin and two of our Korean friends), when I discovered that the computer I had saved my essay on had been wiped clean (granted, in an effort to help me by making it run faster). I found myself at the beginning again, wondering what to write. That situation was another chance to roll with the punches, which might be my motto for living in Korea as a “waegugin” (foreigner). I constantly remind myself that I’m being given opportunities to practice this skill that does not come naturally to my “worry is planning ahead” self. I like to plan ahead and I do not like to find out about things at the last minute. But while living in Korea, I’ve had to accept the fact that much of my life unfolds spontaneously.
For instance, I was about to go home one day when my mentor teacher asked me if I wanted to "play bowling." I thought she meant outside with some students and I said sure. Then she tells me to pack up my things because we’re leaving soon (I assume right after bowling). But after we change out of our school slippers into our real shoes and step outside, she leads me to her car, and I ask her if we’re going bowling somewhere else. We are. She tells me we’re going bowling in the small mountainous town where our school is, but she’s not sure where the bowling alley is so she calls another teacher. That teacher informs us that we’re going bowling in the city where we live, so we drive the 25 minutes to our city. When we get there, however, we get a call saying that bowling is off and the new plan is to meet at Dunkin’ Donuts for some donuts and coffee. Now I like bowling, but I love Dunkin’ Donuts- it reminds me of home because it started near my hometown. So after the plan as I understood it changed four times, I enjoyed drinking coffee and trying different donuts (including my current favorite, coconut tofu) with all the teachers from my school. Lesson: sometimes spontaneity and rolling with the punches ends happily with caffeine and sweet treats! When it doesn’t, just breathe and remember that spontaneity is the spice of life, which seems fitting since Koreans love spicy food and spontaneity. Maybe next time life will surprise you with coffee and donuts.
This skill of rolling with the punches is necessary when teaching, too. Before every class I write out my lesson plan and intend to stick to it, but when the students get bored and sit on the floor when they should be writing the alphabet on the board or, conversely, are really into a memory game with vocabulary words and beg to play it one more time, I switch it up and stray from the plan, either jumping to the next activity or spending more time on the game that’s going well. The ability to be flexible and change things up is really important when teaching 7 different grade levels (K-6), because every grade reacts differently to the same activities.
I think rolling with the punches has two components: 1) being flexible/ready to adapt, and 2) not considering it a personal failure when things don’t go as planned. You can practice the second when the 5th and 6th girls are a bit moody/disrespectful and don’t want to participate in class. You can breathe and realize that their behavior is not about you, and it’s not a reflection of how good or bad of a teacher you are. They’re probably just having a hard day- after all, they’re going through puberty and dealing with growing up.
That said, my tendency is to blame myself when things don’t go smoothly. I like to plan and I like things to go as planned because I like to control my life, but that’s an illusion and it’s not rare for that illusion to fall apart. The other day I was trying to catch a train, but I left my apartment a few minutes late and couldn’t find a taxi so I had to walk the 15 minutes into town before catching one, and as we neared the train station I watched my train pull away. As I sat on the platform waiting an hour for the next train to come, I beat myself up- “How could you leave late? If only, if only, if only…” The flow of my day had been unexpectedly interrupted and in my mind I translated that as “ruined.” It took me until the next morning to get out of my funk. Looking back, I can see that that was a chance to roll with the punches, to give myself the same grace I want to grant other people. I missed that chance and instead vowed, “I will never be late again and I will never miss a train again.” I will, though. I was late this morning and I’ll be late again. Sometimes we just miss our train, and that’s okay.
This post is not to say that rolling with the punches is a comprehensive Korea motto, however. Some things are worth fighting for and should be fought for. Devin and I applied to teach in Korea with a joint application, looking forward to being in the same town after a year of long-distance, being 1400 miles or sometimes a continent apart. But just days before leaving for Korea, we were told that we had been placed 3 hours apart by train. We were upset and a host of other emotions, and it took all I had just to get on the plane. In the U.S. and Korea we were told too many times to count that nothing could be done, that at least we could see each other on weekends. But time together in the same physical place was worth fighting for, and we kept on writing emails and talking to people and praying. 2 days before we left for our province orientation, we were told that (by the grace of God) I had been moved to a city 30 minutes north of Devin’s city. That was joyous news because 30 min. apart is infinitely better than 3 hours apart! I have to admit though that for me it still felt hard because it was not the solution I had wanted, which was for us to be in the same city. The time for fighting was over, though; we had been given a blessing, albeit not the one I had hoped for. It was time to roll with the punches, to turn my expectations over to God and to start adjusting to life in Korea as it really was rather than spending all my energy being angry that things hadn’t gone as planned or pining for how I had wanted them to go.
I’ve been realizing these past few months in Korea that there are so many things in life that we don’t choose- hardships, illnesses, problems at work and in relationships and in our own hearts and minds- that it makes the choices we can make all the more important and precious. So I’m choosing all the more purposefully to love God and love others. I want to fight for what is most important and roll with the punches when it comes to most everything else. I’m learning that having free will does not mean that we can control life, but it does mean that we are free to choose to love, in happy times and hard times alike. I’ll end with a quote that I really like from John Paul II: Freedom exists for the sake of love.
No comments:
Post a Comment