Things that should have never existed

So at my new job I spend a lot of time staring off into space (except when I'm saving lives of course...) and I've started compiling a list of things that society could do better without. This is nowhere near exhaustive, but this is as productive as my brain will get this early in the morning.

Waking up early

Miley Cyrus

The term "funemployment"

Cilantro

Morning breath

Shakespeare's plays

My cooking

Cilantro...I feel strongly about this one.

Mixed Messages

Being a second-generation Korean-American girl is difficult. I'm not trying to film a drama here. I'm sure not being a second-generation Korean-American girl has its difficulties too. But being a Korean in a country that has yet to understand and be fully comfortable with multi-ethnicities is pretty hard. To add to that, being all of that and a girl is a migraine and a half.

Girls like me, we're told we can achieve anything if we put our minds to it, but then no one expects anything from us. We're told to go get 'em, until we go get them, and then we're told to stop getting so many things.

"Go and be all that you can be. Be a doctor and save lives, but just don't do anything crazy like surgery, because that's too much. And who will want to marry someone that's too much? And if you don't get married, you fail at life."

Basically, what I hear from everyone in the Korean-American community is to be marketable, and this market demands girls that are ambitious but not too ambitious, make money but not too much money, love their jobs but not love them too much, and be independent but not too independent.

Excuse my language, but really...what the hell?

Are We There Yet?

Being the oldest child in my family, I had grown up thinking I knew what it meant to be mature and responsible. As if having a younger sibling was qualification enough, I had taken on the mantle of adulthood like a naive child playing superhero dress-up, not fully knowing the meaning of it all. I don't know why I was in such a rush to get there. As I walked my father into the exam room this morning, the glimmer of adulthood dulled, and I saw with clear eyes the sobering truth of real responsibility and maturity. He is 60 years old, and he will not live forever. As if 58 or 59 were far from 60, I had lived last year and the one before as if he'd always be there to walk me through life. I had always made decisions knowing that in real trouble my dad would be able to get me out and took comfort knowing that my dad was taking care of our family. But one day I have to come to terms with "No one will be there but you."

Responsibility has never felt so heavy.

A Reassuring Thought

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 

'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”

A Must See

A New Documentary on Orphan Care: The Drop Box

A trailer for a documentary about extraordinary unconditional love

The New Year

So this is the new year,
And I don't feel any different,
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance).

So this is the new year,
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions.

So everybody put your best suit or dress on.
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once,
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogs bleed into one.

I wish the world was flat like the old days.
Then I could travel just by folding a map,
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways.
There'd be no distance that could hold us back.

Death Cab for Cutie

On Your Mark (a repost)

Sometimes I just feel like running. Not to a particular place or direction but just running somewhere. I would run and run as fast as I can without thinking about anything other than running no thoughts about where I'm heading how fast I'm going no thoughts about the leaving all focused on the going just knowing that when the blurriness of the transitioning scenery fades and I take a good look around all I see is strange and comforting unfamiliarity to indulge in solitude and disconnection until my thoughts of what I left behind can catch up to me out of shape and out of breath and terrified of the unfamiliar landscape

Ready,

Get set,

"I am the Lord; I change not."

There are days when I need these words etched into my eyelids. Or shouted into deep crevices of brain so that the words would reverberate throughout my mind. Because these are the seven hardest words to remember.

The world tries hard to make me to forget that Christ is worth following. It tells me that He was just a man that said some great things and died a horrible death. The world denies that God is good, all the time, and that He will not be faithful to the end.

For a moment I give in to what the world tells me. And in that instance I sink to the bottom of a hole where Christ is not worth following, God is not good, and He is not faithful.

"I am the Lord; I change not."

But even in the depth of this depressing hole, these are the words that He proclaims. He who is faithful and always good, who sent His son, full God and full man, that died on the cross for someone as wretched as me, who cannot even grasp the words that He is the Lord and He changes not.

"I am the Lord; I change not."

These are the words pull me out from my self-destruction and wretchedness, to remind me that He has not changed. From the beginning of time until this very day, He has been and will forever be the Lord. He will always be good, He will always be faithful, He will always be worth following.

Self-Balance

Self-worth is a tricky thing. Too much of it makes you dense, but too little of it makes you a doubter.

I guess life is about finding that balance--that elusive, illusive thing called balance.