Nothing New Under the Sun

What has been will be again
What has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Sometimes I despair that things never change. One of my greatest fears in life is becoming a person who reaches a point of stagnation, whose days blend seamlessly into the next in a bland, gray sameness.

The flight to Korea was surreal. During the 16 hours on the plane, I traveled following the path of the sun, so when I got to the Incheon airport at what should have been 1 am in American time, it was 3pm in Korean time. It was strange to experience that sameness, when the modes of my body told me that the sun should be setting, to look out and see it at the same point in the sky, in a never-changing constant daytime.

Once in Korea, I got to see how other things are unpleasantly the same as in the U.S. Today, all day long I sat in small, cramped offices, waiting for inefficient bureaucracies while I got my bank account and student id card and passport photocopies. Looking around at the faces, I noticed the same claustrophobic irritation that are hallmarks of any waiting room in any office in the U.S. Funnily enough, at the bank the television was playing CSI: NY, as if to show me that even here, in Korea, people still watch the same bad tv shows.

Walking down the streets, I noticed all sorts of things that I was surprised about, like litter, traffic jams, public displays of affection, and loud arguments between taxi drivers and passengers. It sounds silly, but in my mind I've built Seoul up as such a paradigm of modernity and wonder that it never occurred to me that it would have the same nasty elements that plague all mankind.

Later, when I was in a Korean departments store that I was told was the equivalent to Costco (which, being a place of no natural light and a plethora of plastic, is not my favorite place). Two girls in the store had bought live mice. When I saw the mice, I dropped to my knees and motioned that I would like to pet them. I cooed and smiled and thanked the girls in Korean and left. Later, when I ran into them again, they cheered and hugged me. For the rest of the time I was there, they followed me around the store, shoving the mice in my face, talking to me in Korean, trying to imitate my laugh, and exagerating the way I saw "wow" by turning it into a multi-syllable, "Woooo-aaa-ow." I was struck how much their enthusiasm and acceptance reminded me of so many other kids I've taught, laughed, played, and said wow with. Sometimes the things that stay exactly the same are good things.

-Renee