I saw some parent-child podcasts recently on Instagram and thought I should record something like that with my dad. When he visited me two years ago by himself to have some time to himself, we got to talking a lot about some conversations around topics we’ve never talked about before.
Part of it is because I’m older now, in my late 30’s. I’m sure there’s a lot more he can tell me compared to when I was in my early 20’s. Part of it is because I’m walking a similar path as him, following his footsteps. Part of it is we both felt the sensation of time running out, we don’t have forever to keep things in our chests.
So having that experience with him AND seeing some online parent-child podcasts, I reached out to him to have a recurring podcast recording session with him. To make things easier for him we just have the conversation fully in Korean and I’m looking for ways to transcribe it into English so people can follow along in subtitles, or maybe we’ll have a special English episode every once in a while.
Anyway, something we talked about repeatedly in the last five sessions or so was how he was so determined. Determination, based on my experience, seems to be such a rare quality these days. Somehow my dad is so full of it.
How did he not get disappointed or defeated when people didn’t understand the value of hypnosis in Korea? He knew it was his path regardless of whether people accepted it or not. How did he not feel hopeless when he had a streak of months where there weren’t any clients? He used that time to get better at his job. After more questions like this I noticed he never really hesitated or doubt that this wouldn’t work.
Was it just a matter of luck that it worked out for him at the end? What if he gave all of his time and life away to this niche way of helping people and things still didn’t work out? How come he never, ever even considered that possibility at all, when it’s so accessible for me?
Then through his explanation and my intuition I picked up on a vital detail: he grew up poor. He didn’t grow up just poor, he grew up dirt poor. His father passed before he could walk. He never came home to a waiting mom, because grandma was always out in the markets selling something. He frequently skipped meals, he never experienced a winter without a frostbite. If it weren’t for the U.S. missionaries it is highly likely that he wouldn’t have made it at all.
He did tell me about his wounds of not knowing what having a father feels like. It was a greatly tragic story to hear from my dad, to hear that he never experienced what he gave to me. But that sense of lingering and sorrow cannot be found in his approach to living life and making a living.
Being poor had straightened out the priority in his life in a straight line. There was no reason to be distracted or hesitate, because that meant not being able to put food on the table. It was a simple choice: do I want today to sustain me or do I want today to eat away at me? Over time even that choice became a meaningless one since the answer was always to sustain himself.
To sustain himself he started tutoring junior high students since he was a high school student. Then he went to college to tutor high school students. Then he met my mom tutoring my uncle, and he went to grad school hoping to be a teacher. It made sense; he was good at teaching since he’d done it for a long time, and it would make a stable living.
Over time that original plan changed a lot, but that simplicity never changed. Once his mind was set there was no room for any doubt. This is one of the greatest personal strengths I’ve witnessed in a person, and ironically it comes from one of the greatest perils a human can experience: poverty.
If I were in his shoes, I think I would lament. I think I would be distraught by the reality that I’m in, comparing myself to others who have it better. But now I realize even that is something I get to have because I experienced something other than poverty.
Poverty was the only reality my dad knew, and because of that he never took it as a personal weakness. Because he does not take it as a personal weakness, he gets to reap only the benefits of poverty: being crystal clear on the immediate priorities.
Things look a lot different for my dad, but I can see he’s still the same person inside. He doesn’t compare what he has right now with how things were before. Why? Because poverty is not a weakness for him.
I share this with you today to remind you, this is also your story. There are parts of you forged by hardships, but to you they don’t even feel like hardships because it is something that’s simply a part of your life. My dad has had trials and tribulations in his life, but poverty wasn’t one of them. At times we forget that we have this impervious parts of ourselves that are just so radiantly strong, because we focus on the parts that we lack.
My dad grew up poor. And he is who he is because of that. May you be reminded of your inner radiance, even if it came from a shadow.
Billy Seol
July Life Coach
julylifecoach.com
