I would like very much to be a respectable person.
I think I actually am, but I would like to re-learn this and internalize it and feel confident about it. Of course, it is a life-long process and it's not like I would cease striving -
but ...
still. I would like very much to be and to feel like I am a respectable person. Because, I think that it is actually true, even if I sometimes feel very insecure.
I hope, if I have children - sons or daughters, that I can teach them to be respectable and then to expect respect from others, and not to put up with any nonsense if they don't receive it.
What he had to say about it felt personally unburdening. In that spirit, and in a desire to continue a sense of unburdening, I considered that I might try confessing one of my crimes against myself (and others)-
I thought before, that if I ever had a boyfriend, I did not want to be the person who and neglects her other friends for the sake of a relationship. I can try to argue extenuating circumstances - I was trying to do the best I could - but excuses aside, I failed. It troubles me that I could manifest this disparity of intention and action on a topic that is so important to me. There are exceptions, but in general, inside, I feel that I have betrayed many of my friends, and I can only hope for forgiveness and re-acceptance.
I harbor a fear that if others knew of such severe inconsistencies (mistakes, or poorly-applied intentions) within myself, that they will realize that I am a less worthwhile person and that they need not bother with me further. Or that, having been out-of-the-loop, I will not be able to re-enter. I feel like while having been 'away', I may have become a slightly different creature than before, and should allow friends the ability to decide that I am no longer the friend they wanted.
I haven't brought this up to anyone because I think they would tell me it was a silly idea, which I already know. I already know that this fear is largely irrational, and therefore it makes no sense to try apologizing for it or addressing it in some legitimizing manner.
I find myself frequently feeling insecure and wanting to prove myself willing and able to return to being friends with people who probably did not fault me for my absence to begin with. Of course, this insecurity means I continue to be not-fully-present. In order to be a proper friend, I know ought to drop this useless attempt to make up for my previous absence and just relax back into the order of confident friendship.
But, even though I know this - I don't seem to have internalized it.
I am sorry, friends, for not being an available friend before, and now, for needing (and failing) to feel 'good enough,' and for feeling ashamed and doubting the friendships that you have continued to extend.
This week, I've been trying to remember that other people are often not so critical.
A good friend told me (about another subject yes, but I think it applies) that since a task I'd set upon was so difficult to accomplish, then there must be something amiss about the expectations. Either my expectation of what I should be able to do was unreasonable, or my expectation of the amount of time I would need was unreasonable and I needed to spend more time working on it.
I have recently been trying to remember that other peoples' expectations of me are not necessarily my own. This means that if I am disappointed with myself or my actions, then other people are not necessarily disapproving or thinking less of me.
I am trying to remember that if I am dissatisfied with myself, I should also credit myself with that opinion and not project it onto others.
"Kimjongilia: The Flower of Kim Jong-Il" is a documentary, based primarily on interviews with some who escaped to South Korea, primarily between 1996 and 2006. Largely through the narratives of interviewees, but with occasional historical asides (brief synopsis of the Kim family's rise to power and the creation of North Korea) or cultural asides (various North Korean propagandas used to brainwash the society) to establish some context, the film describes the repressive political atmosphere in North Korea, and its heavy tolls on both human life and the human condition.
The producer was available for a few questions afterward. ( I was caught off-guard and didn't immediately have many good questions, but ) she did say that the person who filmed it was inspired to make the film after meeting a man in South Korea who had escaped from North Korea in 1992 and was one of the first to expose the fact that North Korea uses concentration camps extensively to purge (up to the third generation) anyone who could be considered a political dissident (Listening to South Korean radio could be, and was, considered such a crime).
When she met this man and heard his story, she decided to make a film so that others would know. She writes more about her production of the film here: http://www.kimjongiliathemovie.com/learnmore.html
"For sixty years, North Koreans have been governed by a totalitarian regime that controls all information entering and leaving the country. A cult of personality surrounds its two recent leaders: first, Kim Il Sung, and now his son, Kim Jong Il. For Kim Jong Il’s 46th birthday, a hybrid red begonia named kimjongilia was created, symbolizing wisdom, love, justice, and peace. The film draws its name from the rarefied flower and reveals the extraordinary stories told by survivors of North Korea’s vast prison camps, of devastating famine, and of every kind of repression."
The documentary is composed of interviews with some who have escaped North Korea, interspersed with information about North Korea's history and development of its leaders and present state.
The interviewees, having made it to South Korea, can speak in ways that no one living in North Korea is able to, and their voices are strong. Many of them speak of their story in a calm, controlled, and concise manner - underscoring the extent to which they must have been forced to adapt in order to survive and come to some reasonable terms with the atrocities they suffered.
One was an officer in the military, one was completely stripped of her family, one was sold into sexual slavery while searching for her sister, one was carried comatose on the backs of his brothers over the border, some suffered for unknown reasons in concentration camps, and one was born there, knowing nothing else until a newcomer brought stories of hope from an outside world.
Several escaped by bribing border guards to buy a pass to get near the boarder between North Korea and China. As one woman said, "If you didn't buy the pass, you got caught. If you got caught, you were shot to death." Crossing directly from North Korea to South Korea is nigh-impossible due to the DMZ that lies between, unless one is willing to go by sea.
The citizens of North Korea are subject to a complete program of brainwashing. They are isolated from the rest of the world and prevented from learning the deplorable state of their own condition. The reigning Kim is viewed as a deity.
As one man says in the film, comparing the way many Christians say grace to God before meals, "... we said grace to Kim Il-Sung." And adds, of the opinion formed in his mind of Kim Il-Sung, ".. we thought he didn't even pee."
One woman recalled her reactions to Kim Il-Sung's death in 1994 while she was still living in North Korea, subject to North Korean propaganda, "When Kim Il-Sung died, I thought the world was ending ... what would we do?" It was unthinkable that not only could the Great Leader and Father Kim Il-Sung be mortal, but that he might actually die and cease to rule North Korea.
A woman who danced as a youth in North Korea recalled how, while starving, she and her troupe were led to sing songs with lyrics like 'how shall we spread this bountiful rice?'. "Even now I don't understand," she says.
"I thought of the Great Leader as a father," said one man, of his realization of the true nature of conditions in North Korea: "So how could he let us live like this?"
Since leaving those oppressive conditions, the escapees have further recognized what was really going on and how they were being deceived, but the previously quoted man adds, "If I were still there, I would still worship him", presumably more as a matter of consequence than a matter of choice.
A woman identified as Ms. Kim asks, "How could anyone praise Kim Jong-Il? ... I am filled with hatred for North Korea. They killed my family. How can I live without tears? He left me alone ... cursed Kim Jong-Il." Ms. Kim was arrested because her best friend had become Kim Jong-Il's lover and she knew 'too much' about the lives of important men (she met others who had been arrested for crimes such as spreading a newspaper picture of the Leader on the floor, and for listening to South Korean radio). Her mother and father starved to death in a camp. She lost one son to drowning, one to being shot while trying to cross the border, and one to being tortured until his lungs filled with blood. He is still alive, but hospitalized and cannot breathe on his own. She gave up her daughter for adoption to save her from the stigma of being associated with a family that was imprisoned, so that her daughter would have a chance to marry one day. After 35 years, she doesn't know what her husband was arrested for or if he is alive. If I remember right, she escaped by selling everything she owned in order to bribe the guards to let her pass.
One man interviewed was taken with his family to a concentration camp at the age of 9 years old. Someone in his family had been considered to have committed a political crime, and North Korean practice is to purge 3 generations. He screamed so much that the guards let him bring his pet fish with him. For a time, he dried bugs to feed his fish, but when the concentration camp work began he said, "I had no time to cry. We worked so hard and I was so cold. You don't care about your pet fish when you are dying." He was eventually inspired to escape after reading The Count of Monte Cristo, one of the smuggled books circulating among prisoners. He swore that he, too, would take revenge.
The coal mining was the worst. The best job was tending the official beehives. The North Korean economy actually depends partly on the large quantity of labor demanded from prisoners. The camps manufacture military uniforms, bricks, and leather shoes. Some of North Korea's exports, notably doilies to Poland, paper flowers to France, and bras to Russia, are crafted by forced camp labor.
One young man was born in camp, never knowing why his parents were there. He describes how at camp, school was simple. They taught you how to dig coal and how to transport it. Korean reading and writing, as well as addition and subtraction were also taught. At roll call, they recited the camp rules, the first of which was "Any prisoner who does not complete his assignment will be presumed to have an attitude ... and will be executed by firing squad immediately." The other rules begin with things like hiding food, not obeying diligently, trying to escape or failing to report an escape attempt, ... all ending with immediate execution.
This young man was inspired to escape by a newcomer to camp who told of his former, outside life. "The best stories were about eating," said the young man. After hearing such stories, life in camp became unbearable. Together, he and his new friend tried to escape through the fences around the camp near the mountains. The young man made it, squeezing through the fence and descending on the other side of the mountain, but his friend never made it, and he realizes that probably his friend was electrocuted by trying to pass through the fence first.
One interviewee comments: It is a disgrace to the human race that such camps exist.
Not all the interviewees were arrested or escaped from camps. One concert pianist, a man whose story proves he truly lived to play the piano, learned of his country's oppression after traveling to study in Russia and then being reported for playing a piece by a French composer after returning to North Korea. This restriction over his ability to play was intolerable, so he bribed the border guards for an escape to China. Before making it to South Korea, he was captured and tortured by Chinese police. Hung upside-down, he tucked his fingers into his armpits, thinking only that he must not let them harm his hands.
In North Korea, an artist is an instrument of the Party, the film explains, children of the upper class - those loyal to Kim Jong-Il - are the only ones admitted to conservatory. Family background (loyalty to the Party) is everything. One woman explained that although she was a singer, her voice was unacceptable in North Korea because it sounded like the voice of a South Korean pop singer, a capitalist.
Although in the 1950's, North Korea proclaimed the great Worker's Paradise, in the 1980's, there were food shortages which became widespread in the 1990's. After the Great Famine in 1994, the biggest problem for the state in 1995 was how to take care of the corpses. A system was imposed by which circulating military trucks arrived to be loaded with, and haul away, the dead.
One boy from a rural area describes how his family went to the mountain forests to collect roots. They ate grass and bark. One day, while foraging, he was soaked by the rain and became ill. Having no money for food or medicine, at first they laid him aside and waited for him to die. He entered a coma. When he awoke weeks later, he was in a room with an old woman who informed him that he was in China. His brothers and sister had carried him on their backs over the mountains and across the border. But, their parents remained in North Korea and there were penalties in China for harboring North Koreans. His oldest brother felt responsibility to care for the family and would make trips back and forth to bring his parents food. One one of these trips, he was captured. He turned himself in, hoping to receive a lighter sentence. He was publicly executed.
"The fact that they killed a guy like him," says his surviving youngest brother, "It's really hard to deal with." The youngest brother still feels guilty, as if his brother's death is somehow his fault for his sickness causing their first crossing to China.
The military also suffered from food shortages. The State provided them only with salt and rice, and they were left to supply everything else themselves. Further, even though the officers gave orders every day, it was impossible to get work done even if one wanted to because of missing supplies. One officer escaped after brooding for 10 years over how his 'so-called country' had become so tragic and horrific. He took his family by boat through a thick fog, dodging government ships (which actually had no fuel) until he saw the trees on the mountains and knew they had made it to South Korea.
The documentary shows briefly the efforts of some groups to locate escaped North Koreans in China and assist in smuggling them to safety in South Korea. Neither China nor Mongolia are safe for refugees.
Considering the godlike status of Kim Jong Il, there is speculation that North Korea will be wash into chaos at his eventual death. For 20 years the entire NK population has stopped working, says a man in the film of the effects on North Korea's industry and economy. If that becomes 30, then I think it will be over.
Others state: If foreign countries stop aiding Kim Jong Il, North Koreans will end it with their bare hands. Of this, I am certain.
and, If the person who created such a place isn't a criminal, I don't know who is.
However, despite the cruelties they suffered at the hands of their nations leaders, many North Korean refugees separate the hand of power from the land of their home.
"If [ Kim Jong Il's regime ] collapsed today, I'd be in North Korea tomorrow."
The film closes showing the hope that North Korean refugees maintain for their own lives and for the future of their family, friends, and home in Korea.
Ms. Kim speaks again at the end, I am grateful for South Korea and the world and peace - for the people who love peace and freedom - since I have tasted freedom, I have to return to save my North Korean people
I wonder if anyone's listening to our pleas? North Koreans can't speak
(Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program) (one of 10 films chosen by the IDA to be considered for an academy award) Kimjongilia.pdf
The message left by the Documentary is that the world has to save North Korea My own brief thoughts on this is that (although some actions must take place on the diplomatic level) on a more basic level, it is the people of the world - not the countries - and not the United States - who must be aware of and consider the kind of work this will take, on behalf of their fellow people.
( images used are downloadable from the film's website ) ( only phrases shown in quotation marks are direct quotes. Others are paraphrased. )
Way back in the blurry days somewhere between first grade and third grade, when the elementary school guidance counselor, Ms. Millard would come to class with hand puppets, Dulso (that's what it sounded like to me) the Dolphin and a Sea Otter, and teach us that every person was unique and special in their own way.
Of all the times she came to class, one of my more concrete memories is of a discussion about how sometimes people give things away because they want other people to be their friends, and they think that if they give away their trading cards or their candy or their toys, that people will like them. I also remember a class discussion on how some people were like Monsters and some people were like Mice. I might be confusing two different experiences here, but - the kind of people who are like Monsters are the kind of people who put other people down because it makes them feel good about themselves (I did not understand how this worked for a very long time). The kind of people who are like Mice might be quiet and nervous about playing with others. They might give away their own toys so that other people will like them (I also did not understand this exchange for a very long time).
I'm glad that thought stayed with me for the 15 or so years since I heard it, so that this week, I could recognize this unhealthy symptom in myself - having recognized it, I hope to dismiss it.
I have noticed that recently, I tend to feel a need to be able to provide others with something in order to be worthwhile to them - be it food, good company, or anything that I think will make their experience of being a friend of mine more enjoyable. I become overly conscious of evaluating whether I think they would decide if it was worthwhile to spend time with me.
I have been accused in the past of martyring myself, but I contend that I derive personal enjoyment from being able to share things with others, and from contributing to a good outcome overall. I think that in most circumstances, my willingness to share and contribute is generally constructive, although I recognize that things can get lopsided.
But, this is different. While I recognize that I enjoy sharing things (and food is especially fun to share), I have recently found myself feeling helpless when I don't think I have anything to offer, as though I myself and not worthwhile to others unless I have something to give them. Do I expect this of other people? No. I enjoy them for who they are and for whatever we happen to do together. Why shouldn't I think that friends would expect nothing more of me?
I am trying to relax and to trust that my friends are my friends, regardless of any consideration of how I can benefit them.
IF thou couldst empty all thyself of self, Like to a shell dishabited, Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf, And say—" This is not dead,"— And fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou, And hast such shrewd activity, That, when He comes, He says :—" This is enow Unto itself—’Twere better let it be: It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."
In a much previous post, I hoped I would not be left empty for the way I internalized this poem.
I think I would like to add to that, a hope that I would never be full.. either extreme can be prohibitive of interactions of an individual with the surrounding environment. Were I full, I would no longer be able to receive new input from my surroundings. If I cannot interact with my surroundings in any way, I might as well be dead.
I've had some conversations stretching over the months about setting goals in life.
The people I've talked to have set strong courses for themselves, deciding what they want and aiming their careers and efforts towards a future that will bring them money. With money, they can acquire what they want - be it things or activities or lifestyles - to sustain and thrive.
I wasn't so sure. I think I want more a particular means of living.
They would remind me that also, if you want to do some good in the world, it helps to have money. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for example. Look at how much good the Gates (and others with enough wealth) can do because they have money.
But, I've thought of this before. And what troubles me is -How did they get that much money in the first place? While so much of the rest of the world is so poor?
I suspect that if I made a lot of money like that and then contributed it to charity, that I would still not be able to make up for the series of injustices that allowed me to collect such a share of disparity.
I am not against the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. I'm not against people who work to establish a healthy life for themselves. The System exists as it is, and we must work within it.
But, I think I believe that I want a future where such foundations do not exist, because I think in that world, they will also not be needed.
My goals? The best description I have so far is that I am trying to follow a tributary. I don't know where it's going, but I can feel the current and I want to find the river where these things come together.
Somewhat recently, I realized that it seemed like I'd been thinking of programming more as a culture into which I wanted to be accepted than a tool that is useful for commanding computers.
If I can remind myself of that second thing - to view programming as a tool - it becomes more approachable, some pressure eases off from somewhere, and I think I feel more able to explore since my goal is now more directly to discover uses for these tools.
He told me about how in high school, he was trying to tutor some other guy in Alegebra or something. It wasn't working very well. The guy couldn't keep his attention and effort focused on the subject.
The way he told it, the guy was trying - he wanted to learn, he wanted to focus, and he wanted to be interested.
But, he just wasn't interested, and there was nothing he could do about that.
since I have begun to believe that living according to a rule of 'no regrets' puts pretty high stakes on the chance that I will risk and lose, which I think is actually counterproductive for me. Also, I have known myself acting out of an avoidance or fear of somehow still harboring regrets, despite the fact that it is often difficult to anticipate what things I might or might not regret and to inform my decisions with that anticipation.
(I am speaking very much in the first person because I am aware that others may perceive the reminder 'no regrets' in a more personally useful manner. It has lost its use for me, possibly encouraging me to take rash actions in the name of not regretting.)
I like the concept 'no resignation' because it prods me to, whatever the situation, not give up. not give in. To the best of my abilities, my actions (whatever direction) will be choices. I will not suffer or cripple myself in advance for the sake of things that I cannot know whether or not I will regret ahead of time.
But I will do my best to not leave myself at the mercy of my situations, but to make what seems to be the best choice at the time and not to resign to circumstances making the decision for me. If I regret one of those decisions, so be it.
"Doctor, without your wounds, where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and laundering children of this earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love’s service only wounded soldiers can serve ..."
- Thorton Wilder, The Angel That Troubled the Waters
