…and a Happy New Year!

Friday, December 31st, 2010 in: News, Travel

Ok, so this is kind of out of chronological sequence, but I’m about a month and an entire country behind in my posts. Sometimes it’s refreshing to post something that is actually current, instead of just recollections of events passed.

I’m sitting in a cafe in Seoul, South Korea. I know my last post has me halfway through a day at the Daidougei World Cup in Shizuoka. Like I said, I’m behind. It’s been an interesting month, and I can’t share everything  that’s gone down in recent weeks. I’ll catch up eventually. I’ve learned a lot about Korea and I like it here much more than I anticipated. We’re 55km from the most unhinged psychopathic dictatorship in the world, with the largest concentration of artillery firepower trained on a single city, namely, Seoul. Kim Jong Il has threatened a “sacred war,” using his arsenal of nuclear weapons against the south.

And nobody here cares…

At least, that’s what it feels like. The Korean war never technically ended; it was a cease-fire, not a treaty that was signed in 1953. The south has flourished under the 60-year armistice, while the north starves under Kim’s boot heels. Each threat is taken with a grain of sand; if they freaked out every time North Korea acted like it was about to unleash a lake of fire, they wouldn’t get anything done. Life goes on, until it eventually ends. There’s no sense in living in fear, it’s a throwback to our ancestors acting irrationally when confronted with a dangerous situation, our selfish genes doing their best to preserve themselves in the face of annihilation, at any cost necessary. South Korea has been on the brink of war for over half a century, but doesn’t fear it. Bushido is the art of living every moment as it were your last, because it just might be. I admire that, seeing an entire nation practicing it has inspired me to continue to live life to the fullest.

This year has been a long string of eye-opening experiences, both good and bad. I’ve learned the importance of appreciating everything I have because I won’t always have them, and that even when I think I’m roughing it, I’m actually incredibly fortunate and privileged. I’m falling in love with this lifestyle, and looking for ways to make it pay for itself. Of course, the nomadic life has its drawbacks, but I think it’s important for me to experience this before I build myself an anchor and call it home. That’s not to say I never want to settle down somewhere, I just think it’s presumptuous to pick a place before I see what the rest of the world has to offer. Home is full of sentimentality, which is why that’s where the heart is. I guess I’m not as sentimental as I thought.

I only had one resolution for 2010: to spend less than 30 days in the US. Unless something drastic happens in the next 4 hours, it looks like this is the first New Year’s resolution I’ll actually complete. I haven’t yet decided if I’m going to make any resolutions for 2011; it seems counter-productive to project my expectations for how the coming year will be, when it’s so much more freeing to just admit that I don’t know.

The only thing I do know is that I’m excited. Aren’t you?

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