These days, at the end of a long, tiring day, my greatest pleasure is lying in bed before falling asleep and catching a glimpse of a friend’s daily life. It’s the story of my friend, who, at forty, left her life in Korea behind and moved to Japan.
How did she and I become friends in the first place? We first met when I had just turned twenty, at a small workshop making independent short films. She was a hairdresser. Later, after we had grown closer, I learned that she had been born into a poor family and had taken responsibility for supporting her family from a young age. She had started learning hairdressing in high school and had been thrown into the harsh realities of making a living much earlier than people around her age.
So whenever I looked at her, Maggie from the film <Comrades: Almost a Love Story> naturally came to mind. A person who had come from the mainland to Hong Kong carrying ambitions far bigger than her shabby belongings, taking on all kinds of hard work without complaint, working three or even four shifts a day and living tenaciously, yet unable to hide the hunger deep inside her, constantly eating something and looking somehow sad.
Interestingly enough, she and I were, in a way, complete opposites back then. Carrying a deep wound in my heart from the trauma my childhood had left me with, I was nothing but a young idler who spent all day reading books, watching movies, writing, and, when the time came, smoking and drinking, all under the pretext of pursuing a deeper exploration of human nature and life. How on earth we became friends is still a mystery to me, but in my memory, a few late-night drinks we shared when we were still awkward come to mind. I suppose we were able to break down our walls because we saw something beyond each other’s surface.
However, what is even more interesting is that, over the more than ten years since then, I have come to see that our circumstances have completely reversed. Leaving behind countless ups and downs in Korea, I moved through Malaysia and crossed the Pacific to the US. Looking back, my past ten years were no different from the lives of the poor immigrants who poured out and scattered when the crowded train finally arrived at Hong Kong Central Station in that poignant first scene (and last scene) of the movie <Comrades: Almost a Love Story.>
In this country, where people so wealthy that their fortunes can hardly be counted coexist with immigrants living from day to day, I was smaller in stature, looked different, and spoke the language awkwardly compared to them. Still, just like Maggie, I kept my eyes wide open, clenched my teeth, and growled back whenever life hit me, fiercely and carefully making my way through each day. How should I put it? They were days when, even if I was sad, I had no time to be sad, and even if I was in pain, I had no time to dwell on it.
While I was rowing through the years in my own way, she, true to her nature, also remained sharp about the ways of the world, had an eye for making money, and was full of ambition. So she ran a hair salon in Korea, worked as a broker for plastic surgery clinics in Gangnam, managed a restaurant, and kept living her life without ever slowing down in her own way. Meanwhile, it seemed she went through a few ups and downs involving men.
Because she had not grown up feeling loved enough, that had always been her weak spot. Even when we were close friends, she had poor judgment when it came to men, and there was no end to the troubles and heartaches, big and small, she went through. Even so, she had bravely kept her love life going. However, although I didn’t ask about all the details, this time it seemed she had suffered a rather big betrayal. She wandered for quite some time, shaken to the very foundations of her life, but in the end, painfully pulling herself together, she decided to leave Korea. It has already been about a year and a half since she left for Japan with a gloomy face and light luggage.
In the videos she posts from time to time, just when she is about to fade from my memory, she is working as a hairdresser with the help of an acquaintance, attending language school, and getting used to public transportation such as the subway and buses, which she never had to use while living in Korea. On her days off, she explores clothing stores, variety shops, and restaurants near where she is staying.
Compared to the life she had lived in Korea, it was quite simple and modest, but somehow, her complexion and characteristic cheerful vitality were gradually coming back to life, little by little. For that, I was grateful, and at the same time, I felt as though seeing her like that was awakening in me something very important that I had unknowingly lost.
Just as a dandelion seed that has drifted a thousand times in the wind finally settles down, takes root, and comes into full bloom, I kept seeing glimpses of my much younger self in her, though I couldn't quite say why. Back then, I was an immigrant worker for whom every penny mattered, with cold hands, a perpetually hungry stomach, and a thoroughly scruffy appearance. Even after a hard day's work as a plumber, I would steal every spare moment to visit the library, pinching my thighs and splashing cold water on my face to keep myself awake as I read, collected, and memorized the beautiful sentences written by critics. Why did that time, a secret known only to me, keep flickering over her image?
Watching her from afar, I come to hold two weighty thoughts. The first is the realization of just how fond I am of the phrase “barely, barely.”
There was a line in a movie, “These days, there are too many people who don't even have anyone they hold dear.” Looking back, even when the things I loved felt so heavy and burdensome that I desperately wanted to throw them all away, what I ultimately chose to carry to the very end helped me stand back up, kept me moving, and protected me. This is what I learned little by little over many years of living as an obscure writer, quietly loving someone on my own, and living away from home for over a decade.
And I suppose my friend, who has only just begun to stand on her own two feet, is also learning a similar lesson through the life unfolding before her, that “barely, barely” is ultimately the truest love for oneself and one's own life. Knowing where that journey will eventually take her, I find myself watching her growth with such deep affection.
And one more thing. Watching her life, I find myself asking whether I am truly living the life I want, even if it means giving up many things, and whether I am pursuing what matters more than money diligently enough, without shame, working just as hard for it as I do for money itself.
Having lived a little, I have come to realize how strange life truly is. Sometimes we fix our eyes only on the summit of Mount Everest and climb toward it with everything we have, only to discover that once we get there, there is nothing left to do but come back down. And other times, just when we feel we have lost everything and have been driven to the edge of a cliff, the path in life we have arrived at because we had no other choice turns out, in the end, to be the very path that saves us.
In this way, it has always been the nature of our lives that no one can say for certain, until the very end, what is good and what is bad. And in that context, despite the questions and worries of so many, and the even more relentless doubts and fears from within herself, she followed the flow her life was leading her in, stepping steadily through the unknown until she finally saved herself, and became a presence as solid and weighty as a great mountain, one I am deeply proud of. And so, she, who had always seemed to me like Maggie in <Comrades: Almost a Love Story>, began at some point to look like Karen in <Out of Africa.>
After all, wasn’t Karen in that film someone who ultimately made her way alone through every failure life poured upon her, who raised her voice and took command of a vast farm and its Black workers in order to make a comeback, and who, along the way, faced the tragedy of losing the person she loved, growing along the unpredictable narrative of life itself? I hope my friend’s soul, too, will grow in just that way.
And so, when we meet again someday, may we, even though the lives we have lived have been winding and far from easy, recognize each other once again and smile at one another with the smile that only those who have held tightly, with both hands, to life’s most precious values and never let them go can wear. For surely, it will be a smile that anyone who has lived a life of a similar kind could never fail to recognize.
© Text & Photos by Tao Jung