I gave a wedding speech when MJ and I married in 2017 (Is giving a speech at one's own wedding already a sign of talking too much) where I expounded on the idea of Korea non-communicativeness, where older gentlemen from the Busan region in South Korea would place value in speaking as little as possible, only uttering 3 phrases to their newylwed wives: "Let's go, let's eat, let's sleep." (가자, 먹자, 자자). It's really all you need, huh? I am not like way. Ever since I was a kid I have been bursting to speak, jumping onstage at Chinese school when I was 5 to tell a story in Chinese. It's only been social norms that have slowed me down, made me choose my words carefully and subdued my eagerness to let the whole world know my thoughts.
Which is why I've been a little depressed at home, not being able to speak. It's similar to not realizing I haven't laughed all day: it's not very noticeable until I actually do laugh and feel how good it is, and the sudden recognition of not having laughed enough for awhile, or like when I haven't drank enough water all day and finally get a sip of cool water that immediately goes down into my stomach and I can feel my body greedily absorbing it. That's what conversation is like for me now that I work from home; no one to bounce my thoughts off of, no one to ask questions to, no one even to say hello or goodbye to. I did my fantasy baseball draft this morning which is just a cornucopia of jokes, greetings, stories, one-liners, and catching up with old friends, and I realized how big a hole I've created by just working continuously from home without speaking to anyone: I've made a career out of knowing multiple languages, but ironically it's made me not be able to speak any of them to anyone (well, that and Covid-19).
Not speaking to others has given me the mildest, mildest form of depression, but I consider myself lucky in having great physical health and seemingly more importantly nowadays, great mental health. I find the writing of Matt Haig, author of international bestsellers "Reasons to Stay Alive" and "The Midnight Library," particularly interesting because it explains what it's like to feel depressed and have suicidal thoughts, something that is very foreign to me, like an alien from the planet of Depression needs to explain to me what depression is like (credit to Haig for this metaphor). Apparently Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, and a whole host of famous people in history have battled depression, people I wouldn't necessarily associate with depression (as opposed to say, Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath). It's really jarring that people want to die because they don't just feel like their life on a scale of 0 to 100 is a 0, it's actually a -100 and it's getting worse, or that they are trapped in a tunnel that's being closed in from both sides and can't seem to find anywhere safe to go to. Haig does a great job breaking these down for target audiences of depressed people and sympathizing since he also considered suicide, but his fictional book "The Midnight Library" is just fascinating in exploring something most humans fantasize about- if they could go back in time and change decisions they made in their lives that were forks in the world, and to see how those different realities would have turned out. I've often played these scenarios out in my mind, and I've always looked on the bright side of those realities, like "oh if I had just gone to UCLA instead of University of Illinois for college I would have had such a better college life!" and thus getting upset at myself. (I imagine this self-loathing and regret is much harsher for depressed people and often is a main source of their regret). Haig does a great job of (IMO giving a harsh reality check) that those other forks in the road might not have turned out that great neither, or you'd be sacrificing something that you take for granted in the path that you did take, like maybe I wouldn't have graduated so quickly at UCLA, or I would have gotten in with the wrong crowd and done drugs..... all leading up to the idea that even if you have a Midnight Library to go back and change your decisions, you might find that the current life (the one where some people hate and want to ask out of) might just have some redeemig qualities about it, and you might just find something to live for. Important, important ideas in our times of social media, loneliness, instant gratification, and infinite choices.
As for my forced taciturnity (I checked, it's a word), I guess it could be much worse, and I could just go out there and make some new friends, since Covid is hopefully, crossing my fingers, about to end. Happy April!
No comments:
Post a Comment