Fitter Happier

for absolutely no reason at all

The Last Time I Cried

           It was the dawn of March 17th. The hour hand had finally made its tantalizingly slow turn around the clock, and another tiresome week of homework and quizzes had finally given way to another blissful Saturday of rest. Normally, in celebration of the arrival of another day of salvation, I would have slept at around 2 o'clock, about an hour earlier than the average time of my slumber. But that day was no normal Saturday - it was St. Patrick's Day, and so at a little to 3 o'clock, I was laid back in my chair, staring at the ceiling through the pitch darkness and listening over and over to a song that I had been listening to since the clock turned twelve.

           During the 18 years of my life, I had listened to a multitude of songs and music. My interests in music had shifted and expanded over the years to encompass a vast range of genres from classic to rock, from folk to hiphop, from country to metal. But never until that day had I ever empathized with the lyrics of a song, so when I heard John Mayer's "St. Patrick's Day," I could not stop listening to the song over and over again.

no way November will see our goodbye

when it comes to December it's obvious why

no one wants to be alone at Christmastime

come January we're frozen inside

making new resolutions a hundred times

February won't you be my Valentine

and we'll both be safe until St. Patrick's Day

           From some time, listening to the lyrics, I had started crying. It was not a pouring kind of crying - it has been some time since I have cried with tears flowing down my cheeks in streams. Instead, during the course of the song, a tear would slow grow at the corner of my eyes and at the end of each, it would finally succumb to gravity and gradually creep down my cheeks, down my neck until it reached the neck of my shirt and was absorbed into the fabric. Having listened to the song for hours, I could distinctly feel the moistness of the clothing around my neck.

           I sat there, crying and feeling a complex mixture of feelings. I felt sad and depressed; I felt isolated and alone; I felt insecure and incomplete; I felt remorse and regret. The sensation that I had no place to rely on in my times of grief and hardship surrounded me, swallowed me, and overwhelmed me, clawing at my heart and drawing out my tears. The wall on which I could lean on when I was trying to stand up from the blows that life delivered was gone, and the fact that I had put myself in this position, that I had thrown away my happiness and meaning of life tormented and choked me into endless regrets.
           Tears entail a variety of meanings. Sometimes it is the result of sorrow and grief, sometimes of contentment, and sometimes of nothing at all. I cried for sorrow. And the truth is, the sorrow still lingers.      

The Comprehensive Range of Who I Am

           The heat. The sweat. The frenzy. The thrashing guitar solo and the pulsing rhythm of the drum. And above all, the high-pitched, ear shattering screams of the man who contributed to the musical field of heavy metal. "Sworn to avenge! Condemn to hell! Tempt not the blade, all fear the sentinel!"

           A month and a few days ago, I was standing amidst a wild crowd, jumping up and down, slamming into each other, whistling and screaming unintelligible phrases, out of which pretty much only two words could be made out - "Judas Priest." I have been an ardent fan of their heavy metal music, which I often listen to in a multitude of occasions, including during studying, when on the move, and even sometimes in the car or on the bus, while I am sleeping to the rhythmical motion of the vehicle. Thus when I heard that these metal gods were coming to perform in Korea for their final Epitaph world tour, I had seized this precious and last chance and gone to see them in person, albeit from afar.

           At the concert, there was a thirty minute interval between the moment in which the guest performers finished their songs, and the moment when the curtain with the Judas Priest symbol rose up slowly and the legendary figure of Robert Halford emerged on the stage, with his bald head and distinctive beard. During this period of preparation, the crowd could do nothing but wait. While some people started talking to each other about topics both related and unrelated to music - which song from the album "British Steel" they loved best, which solo of KK Downing they had most been awed at, what happened to them on their way to the concert and what they were going to do afterwards, I stood there thinking about how I'd come to see the live performance of one of the still existent defenders of the faith.

K.K. Downing

Richie Faulkner

           I barely knew rock until I was in the third grade of middle school. I listened to a variety of music, mostly hip-hop, but also Korean folk songs from the 70s and 80s with a pinch of Korean popular music which so exclusively involved idols. I have no definite dislike of a music genre. I attempt to understand that there is a charm to every music genre which was the source of their appearance in the music industry in the first place, and appreciate it. I may not like the skills of certain singers and artists, but of only the music itself, I hardly harbor distaste. I was first introduced to the music of Judas Priest, or rather, the title of the song "Painkiller," which frankly, sounded ridiculous the first time. I forgot about it until I came to KMLA, when I was introduced to the band more seriously by my classmate who had very much insight into rock and metal. As always, I accepted their music without resistance, and came to like their style. So there I stood waiting to see whether Richie Faulkner could effectively cover KK's absence.

           Come to think of it, my whole personality has always been this way - lenient and comprehensive. I think this is quite evident in two aspects - how I interact with other people and in my academics. In interpersonal relations, I rarely argue my opinion strongly unless it involves dire consequences which I am certain I cannot bear - most of the time, I am tolerant.

           I started writing this essay in the dark, not because the lights had been forcibly turned off from the dormitory rooms after two o'clock in the morning to ensure that the students got some decent sleep to support themselves through the following day. No, the time was eleven in the evening, a time when in most other rooms, the main light is turned on, and normal visibility is achieved. Instead the lack of proper visibility was due to the preferences of my roommate who not only prefers the dark, but says that he needs it in order to study. I do not studying in a camera obscura with only a lamplight on, but as he says that he cannot study in other conditions, while I can bear with the dark, I said fine. And it's not the first time. Although I will not disclose particular names, I have had to endure friends watching movies without earphones or headphones while I attempt to do my homework, and I have had to listen to the snores of a roommate who insisted on going to bed before midnight. But I have deemed them as bearable and disregarded the inconveniences they gave me. And I still plan to do so in the future, because I despise the idea that in order to insist on my conveniences, I will be causing another person severe difficulties in whatever it is, academics, slumber, etc.

           My comprehensive attitude is also prevalent in my academic preferences, or more decisively, academic dispreferences - none. Zip. Nil. Nada. The range of synonyms is vast, but all in all, it can be said that in every subject I see value and interest. I may not always have talent in all, but I am willing to try out all that I can in order to find that talent, and I am more than happy to do so, as I am interested in all academic subcategories.

           This leads me to a life complex and problem that I have been having since about the second grade of my middle school - what to do with my life. I have experimented with a great diversity of subjects since middle school. In middle school, I studied physics for a while, I took the Korean Chemistry Olympiad and got a bronze prize, also received a prize in the Korean Mathematics Olympiad, studied economics with my father, and attempted to read philosophy books (at this, however, I failed). In high school I expanded my interests to art, becoming a member of the school photography club. And the result is that I have no clear idea of what I have to do for a living. People say that the ideal job is that which adequately integrates talent and interest. Well, I think that I am above average in an extensive variety of subjects, but at the same time, do not excel profoundly in one. And I have no particular liking of a subject either, so I have been having the problem that it seems that I ran into a dead end - or rather, a mental quagmire in which everything seems to stick onto me and pull me down. Had just one thing attracted me, then I could have clung onto that vine with passion and saved myself from a lack of hope for the future.

           But at the same time, I like to think of this as who I am - a tolerant all-rounder, an intellectual multiplayer. I will live with others as I have done now, putting myself after others. I still have hope that I will be able to find something that fits me perfectly, a job that can employ all my interests and knowledge and will be more gratifying to me than any other career. So still I do not strive to find one specific interest, but keep on living as I have always done, doing everything I can.

           As I write, I am listening to the song "Nostradamus" from Judas Priest's album "Nostradamus." "Your future lies within my eyes. What I predict will terrify. I can't control what comes to be, from the past to the present to eternity," sings Halford. If I can't control who I am, then so be it. If who I am will control me, then I leave my fate in my hands. That sounds about right.

On Outliers

           I watched Al Gore's renowned documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" in the later part of my 6th grade of elementary school. In fact, I recall that just prior to my entering middle school, my father had called me to his room one weekend afternoon. I remember it clearly. He sat me down on his now discarded chair, a cheap, old product with a seat with flakes that I loved to tear off. He put his headphones on my head, and explaining to me that as I was now going to be a secondary school student, I should acquire knowledge of the substantial problems of the world, turned on the documentary. I remember many aspects of this incident. I vaguely the awe that I felt at the information contained in those 94 minutes. But I recall with the utmost clarity my sunken mood at learning that with the realization of an inconvenient comes the draining of hope.

           Yes, I learned that some uncomfortable knowledge lead to despair. With "An Inconvenient Truth" I felt disheartened by the fact that the world was at an environmental crisis, which seemed so disastrous and difficult to resolve. This was equal to the sensation I felt reading "Outliers, the Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell, in which he accounts for the causes of success in an unconventional way, focusing not on individual values but on external factors beyond the powers of individuals. I have read up to only the second chapter of his book, but already I feel discouraged.

           Actually, I wasn't so depressed with the book until I got to the first chapter - that is, I felt perfectly at ease with the introduction, "The Roseto Mystery." The introduction presented the idea that a person's success has a significant correlation with the environment and situation in which one is placed - definitely not a ground-breaking, mind-shattering revelation. Of course the environment matters. Had a same person been born into two drastically contrasting surroundings - say, one in an affluent and acclaimed family in the suburbs just outside New York, and the other in a family in Somalia with twelve siblings, the outcome of their lives would be just as drastically different.

           But my discomfort started from the first chapter, "The Matthew Effect," which introduces the idea that arbitrary cuts of distinction influences one's success. That is, if people, at an early age, are divided into groups, for instance, by date of birth with arbitrary cutoff dates, then there appear differences within that group, not by talent, but by age. The older children who have lived almost a year more than the younger ones are physically and psychologically considerably advanced, as growth is a steep function of time during that age, and this maturity is confused with talent, thus leading them to be classified as gifted. This, in turn, provides them with better education or training, which gives them an additional advantage, and this goes on until the "accumulative advantage" has widened the gap beyond the capacity of recovery by personal efforts. As of the validity of the theory, I was quite convinced. My problem was that the solution was feeble. With every accusation of a problem should come the suggestion of a solution that will help overcome the challenge. Although Gladwell does state multiple cutoff dates, it seems far from realistic, in that this, unlike what he claims, will require much more work and money than now, and that the classification of people into smaller groups is not necessarily a positive thing.

           My negative emotions deepened with "The 10,000-Hour Rule." Reading the title and the first few pages I was able to grasp what the chapter was trying to say, and I was glad that the importance of persistence was being explored. I relate to this very personally, as I am well known among my peers to be the madman whose hobby is staying up all night doing his homework and studying for his quiz, the madman who exploit himself so much that every week he loses a few kilograms of weight. But the story did not go as I expected. For one, the book disregarded talent, and also, it emphasized too much the importance of luck. Unlike what the book says, it is because of talent and the interest that the talent provokes that people get the motivation to practice and work 10,000 hours at something. And the reliance and emphasis on the importance of luck is most disconcerting. It is a tendency to leave things up to fate, and to leave one's success to things beyond one's control is too passive a stance. So reading the chapter, I was displeased, and perhaps a little angered. 

           Find the reasons for success in many places and in many factors. But don't give up, and don't make others give up. That's the problem I found with "Outliers."