In the course of this month, I came to the sobering realization that 1) I’m unhappy and 2) I don’t know how to fix it.  My academic life took a sharp and painful turn in mid-February and things have been really up-and-down since.  Despite the infrequent posts on this blog, Korean has been a constant source of comfort, not to mention sanity, for me in the past month.  Not a single day goes by without my doing something related to Korean.

This is one of my favorite Korean proverbs, and one that I think about often these days.

하늘이 무너져도 솟아날 구멍이 있다.

Literally: “Even if the sky falls, there will be a hole from which you can escape.”  As Korean Wiki Project puts it, “There is still hope in even the most desperate of situations.”

(I suppose the English equivalent would be “Every cloud has a silver lining” but the Korean version is so much more poignant to me.  ‘Silver lining’ implies that something good comes out of every bad situation; I don’t know how true this is in reality, and certainly, I doubt anyone would start off feeling this way.  The Korean version just sounds so right to me.)

Anyway, I think about this proverb almost every single day and tell myself:  As long as I am a healthy, driven human being, I can pick myself back up from every fall.  Nothing is the end of the world.  I can start over.

I can’t say I’m 100% okay at this point, but I’m slowly learning to let go of unnecessary worries and stress.  Hopefully things will look up soon.

(P.S. I missed you all.  I promise haven’t disappeared entirely off the interwebs.  In the interim, I somehow managed to gain a few new readers, so a special warm welcome to them.)