Filling In the Map

At present, I am sitting, alone, outside Gate G99 of San Francisco International Airport. It is about 10:00 pm, local time, and I am approximately 7 hours and 2,000 miles into my journey to South Korea and, ultimately, Gwangju.

In other words, far, far less than halfway.

I promised everyone that I’d keep them updated on my adventures, and it seems that now, at the very beginning, is a good place to start.

So let’s start at the beginning – the very beginning. Namely, why am I doing this? Why did I leave my family, my friends, the life I’d built in St. Louis to fly halfway around the world, to a country I’ve never been to, to teach a bunch of young people I’ve never met, whose language I don’t even begin to speak? Well, if we’re being totally honest, I can hardly even consider not doing it. Let me explain – no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

When I was young, I loved to pore over maps. My gaze would rove up and down their contours, taking in the exotic names, my finger tracing the strange borders, and I would wonder, what is it like there? I doubt Bolivia is truly orange all over, despite what my ancient atlas insisted, and Egypt’s borders seemed suspiciously regular – far too regular to be what it was really like on the ground in Egypt. I would find obscure countries nestled in the mountains of Central Asia,* far from seemingly everything in the world (a geographical oddity, that), and wonder what life was like on the far side of the world.

Because fundamentally, maps are blank spaces. Vast expanses of territory are reduced to a few swatches of color. Ten thousand cultures, vibrant, living cities, entire peoples would be rendered as nothing more than perhaps a dot here with a strange collection of syllables penned in next to it. And eventually, I realized something fundamental about maps: Maps are not the territory. They’re just a picture of the territory – and a limited, incomplete picture at that. Maps have their place, but they really don’t tell you anything about the world. How can you learn about the world, then? How can you take the small splash of color on the tip of a distant Asian peninsula, helpfully labeled “The Republic of Korea”, and fill in the blank space?

We’ll begin by breaking it down in numbers. South Korea is a nation of about 100,000 square miles thrusting itself south from the Asian mainland, nestled cozily between the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea, and the sea of Japan. It lies about 6700 miles from the continental US – 12 and a half hours flying time from San Francisco, incidentally – and is 15 timezones from any human being I know. More than 50 million souls call it home, and in the last 5 decades it has risen from abject poverty, suffering under the boot of Japanese occupation, to the 10th largest economy in the world. Its high-tech sector is among the world’s most advanced, its Starcraft players are renowned worldwide, and it has played host to two Olympic games in the last 30 years.

Do you feel like you have a good understanding of Korea now?

No, neither do I.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to explore the world. What’s over the next hill? Where does this river start? Where does it end? How far does this street run? The world is here to be experienced and enjoyed in the brief window we’re given to do so, and you can’t do that if all your interactions with a place are mediated through the pages of a book or the pixels of a screen. If you want to know a place, you have to go there. You have to let the thousand sights of it batter your eyes, the roaring sound of it storm about your ears, the smells pour into your nostrils. You need to feel the heat of the sun or the coolness of the breeze on your skin as you simply breathe in someplace new.

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I’m a huge nerd, and among my many hugely nerdy hobbies is a love of poetry. If you’ll indulge me – and you will, ‘coz it’s my blog and I can do what I want here – let’s let Henry Wadsworth Longfellow share the stage for a bit:

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers, 

   Life is but an empty dream! 

For the soul is dead that slumbers, 

   And things are not what they seem. 

Life is real! Life is earnest! 

   And the grave is not its goal; 

Dust thou art, to dust returnest, 

   Was not spoken of the soul. 

You cannot know a place just by analyzing cold statistics. The only way to know it is to go there. And why do I care about knowing a place so much? Because life is short, and I want to experience as much as I can in my flitting threescore-and-ten here on Earth.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, 

   Is our destined end or way; 

But to act, that each to-morrow 

   Find us farther than to-day. 

Sure, I could have stayed in St. Louis, and been happy. I had a great job, good friends, a wonderful home. But I was also stagnant. I loved my work, but I wasn’t growing as much as I could have been. I need to push myself further, to see how much I can grow. 

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 

   And our hearts, though stout and brave, 

Still, like muffled drums, are beating 

   Funeral marches to the grave. 

In the world’s broad field of battle, 

   In the bivouac of Life, 

Be not like dumb, driven cattle! 

   Be a hero in the strife! 

Well, this is my way of making myself a hero in the strife. Enough of going along with the flow, doing what was asked of me more or less competently. For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m fully in control of my own destiny: If I alone had not chosen to go to Korea, then I would not be going. And yet now, here I am, alone in San Francisco, entirely through my own choices and powers. That’s actually kind of an intoxicating feeling. Empowering!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! 

   Let the dead Past bury its dead! 

Act,— act in the living Present! 

   Heart within, and God o’erhead! 

Well, this is me acting. I have no idea what to expect, really. I have  no idea what I’ll do after Korea. But let the future take care itself (he marks the fall of the littlest sparrow). For now, I have enough to worry about.

Lives of great men all remind us 

   We can make our lives sublime, 

And, departing, leave behind us 

   Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another, 

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main, 

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

   Seeing, shall take heart again. 

I don’t know about sublime, but part of the reason for this blog is my own paltry attempt to leave footprints for my forlorn and shipwrecked brother. I don’t know who they are, or if they’ll ever read this, but I pray that it may  be of some small service. I mean, it certainly is making me feel better.

If you’re reading this, and feeling like you’re in a similar stagnant place – take heart, brother! The world is yours for the taking! Go out there and seize it! 

Let us, then, be up and doing, 

   With a heart for any fate; 

Still achieving, still pursuing, 

   Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life

Thanks for indulging me. This concludes our Poetry Corner – for now.

So, there you have it. I have the opportunity to explore, to see a part of the world I never have before, and fill in some of the blank spaces of the map with vibrant, living color. I’ll be in the heart of Korea, working to try and open up the horizons of the young people I have the privilege of teaching. China and Japan are both just over the water – I’ll be closer than I’ve ever been to Qin Shi Huang’s wall and the Forbidden City on the one hand, and the ancient land of the daimyo and the shogun on the other. And beyond? Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines…eventually, the entire world. I’m so excited I can hardly wait.

I have to wrap this up – they’re calling the boarding now. Time to leave everything I know, and dive into the unknown. Wish me luck, everyone.

“Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.” – Christopher Colombus

*Tajikistan. It was Tajikistan.