Dear Goldmund, my life has been completely ruined ever since I met writing.
A piece of writing that had ripened inside me, ready at last to be brought out and poured forth, kept holding me captive, so I spent the weekend setting everything else aside, wandering through nothing but sentences until I had dark circles under my eyes, a stiff neck, and a churning stomach. While the world carried on as nonchalantly as ever, I was waging a solo battle like a Rachmaninoff rhapsody, only to end the weekend utterly exhausted and drained.
And then, without fail, Monday morning dawned, so I showered and changed as if nothing had happened, practiced swapping my expression and gaze a few times in front of the mirror, and went right back to school and work, back among people. I wanted to make a fuss about how I had nearly died over the weekend, but there was no one I could let myself be that vulnerable with, so I simply said I had a good rest and asked, “How was yours?”
So, most of the time, I can more or less bear it, but sometimes writing turns me into a person so sensitive that I can hardly bear myself. It often makes me sad, too, and there are times when I feel as though I might be crushed beneath the weight of that sadness. There are also times when it drives me into such chaos that I no longer know where or even who I am. When I stop to think about whether I am really writing anything all that remarkable, the answer is always "not really." Furthermore, even after having spent nearly my entire life writing, writing remains an impossibly daunting task, one that demands I pour everything I have into it, only to barely save it, if at all, and more often than not, fail even then. And yet, Goldmund, why on earth do I keep carrying on with this utterly ridiculous one-sided love?
Well, I may be clinging to you and pouring out my frustrations, but in the end, I am, after all, the one who knows best what I gain from this love. That must be why I can't even bring myself to put an end to this ridiculous affair.
I hope this isn't an arrogant perspective, but I often feel that those of us living today spend our lives merely floating along the superficial layers of life, rather than directly confronting what we truly want and what truly matters, much as Thoreau pointed out in Walden, written in the nineteenth century, that people live caught up in convention and busyness, having drifted away from the essential things in life.
Come to think of it, in a world loud with the noise of happy people eating, drinking, laughing, and consuming, a life spent suffering alone over writing that no one reads often feels nonsensical, leaving me with a bitter sense that I am absurdly wasting my life. Yet, I know at least this much: that it is thanks to this writing, which will not stop and which I cannot bring myself to stop, that I have been able to live asking what matters more for a little while longer; and that just as Thoreau went into the woods wanting to reach the essential things in life, so too have I been able to face life a little more directly through writing.
Living as an obscure writer takes so much from me in so many ways, just like a relentless loan shark would, yet it also breathes something so vital into me that I even begin to think this might not be a hopeless, one-sided love after all, but true love.
Goldmund, I have never had a child or raised one, but I often find myself thinking that writing must be quite similar. For one thing, just as raising a child takes not only a couple but an entire family and a whole village, writing also requires us to tend to so many things. Just as a machine needs to have its grime removed and be lubricated regularly to keep running smoothly, we too have to diligently care for our bodies and minds to stay mentally clear and maintain the concentration that writing requires, and that is no small task. And just as one must first become a good person to become a good parent, I believe that good writing, too, can only come from a good person. That, too, must be another thing the two have in common.
Just as there is a saying that raising children never goes as planned, it is also a bitter parallel that no matter how hard I struggle, most of the pieces I write still go awry, and so many are discarded even after the final period has been written. Likewise, just as a parent never lets go of a child's hand first, no matter how exhausting parental devotion may be, so too does the fact that I can never let go of writing's hand, even as it torments my life in so many ways, strike me as an exquisite resemblance.
And just as it is not only parents who raise their children, but parents who also grow alongside them, it is an undeniable fact that my writing and I have stayed by each other's side over all these years, watching and propelling each other's growth. Moreover, just as knowing what is truly precious in life serves as a solid anchor whenever we must weather severe storms, looking back, writing has steadfastly played that reliable role in my life when I felt stranded and on the verge of shipwreck, just as a child does for a parent. Before you, who walk the same path, I muster the courage to lay bare these bashful feelings I have had nowhere else to put.
Goldmund, you understand better than anyone the exhaustion and futility of writing, how this fickle craft demands razor-sharp focus, and how much energy it drains both physically and mentally. So I have sometimes caught myself wondering whether, if I had given the considerable time and effort I pour into writing, along with all the care and tender affection that go into the many pieces that end up being discarded rather than those that bear fruit, to something else instead, my life today might have turned out quite differently.
Despite all these complaints, there is a thirst within me that even I cannot quell, and a spark that must be set off, so I continue almost every day to fight alone a battle that others neither know nor understand. Yet whenever I raise my head and look around in the midst of it, I see only a world teeming with those who have no interest, need, or care for such things, eagerly chasing after festivals, resorts, culinary hotspots, luxury goods, and all manner of dazzling pursuits whenever they get the chance.
Of course, I do not hate myself for choosing such a foolish and futile path, nor do I envy their lives. If putting down the heavy burden of writing meant losing the depth of life and living a one-dimensional, superficial life in exchange, I find even the thought of it frightening. In the end, everyone must have a place where they belong. And yet, Goldmund, even with such conviction and faith in writing, I cannot help feeling that writing, after all, is a profoundly lonely endeavor.
Writing makes me increasingly sensitive and sharp, so it frequently happens that I stab others and cut myself with my thorns and jagged edges. And while I diligently wander the cosmos within and without to better understand humanity and life, the very subjects at the heart of writing, writing is also ultimately a thoroughly solitary act, like a hermit facing a wall in silent meditation, so I repeatedly cut off my contact with the outside world, and the sense of distance only grows wider with time.
Moreover, because writing is closer to the task of an observer, one who keeps a step or so of distance to explore and reflect, rather than that of an experiencer who lives and loves, I often falter under the weight of self-doubt, wondering if I am missing what truly matters as I go through life as a writer. Much like the rabbit of the Dragon Palace and the turtle on land, this world and I seem to inhabit slightly different worlds and think in slightly different ways, and so I also often feel that, as time goes by, it becomes increasingly rare for either of us to be understood by the other or to seek comfort from the other.
Come to think of it, Goldmund, might the fact that our literary precursor, Baek Seok, discarded this world as too filthy, and that another literary precursor, Yi Sang, bade farewell because he could not bear how insipid all human conduct seemed, have been, in truth, nothing more than common side effects of writing?
In this way, the writing ego within me, regrettably, may be evolving into something that finds people harder and harder to endure. Yet paradoxically, whenever that happens, writing gently soothes me, saying, “Writing itself arises from the very people you find so burdensome and from among people, so that is precisely where you belong.” When I sit down and whine like an eight-year-old faking an illness to skip school, complaining that it is too filthy to put up with, writing strokes my back with its signature quiet gravity and ultimately turns me back toward the very place I tried so hard to escape and get away from, the place where I must belong.
In this manner, this thoughtful companion endures me and holds onto me once again. Come to think of it, whether among people or apart from them, whether we write or do not write, life is inherently a lonely affair, and learning the wisdom and knack for making a good friend of that solitude is, in truth, an important task of our lives; I suppose it was also this very companion who ultimately taught me that.
Without this desperate, aching love, my life might have been far easier, yet undeniably empty. And so, Goldmund, I now humbly acknowledge this truth and am willing to shoulder that heavy burden. It is not, as before, out of some vain ambition to become someone grand through writing, nor to satisfy the countless deficiencies and desires within me. It is because I now know that I need writing as my center of gravity to move through the rest of my life in the right direction; that only with it can I fully live out today without once again being so easily swayed by the past or the future, by regret or calculation. It is because this has become more important to me than anything else.
Goldmund, as someone who has spent a lifetime engaged in this trade of writing, when was it that you first thought to yourself that this wretched, unbearable affair of writing might just be your fate? And how did you come to accept it?
These days, I often find myself ruminating on that very concept of “destiny.” It goes something like this: in my twenties, I made every possible effort to escape my terribly lonely life and also to prove that I was a normal person who had no trouble getting along with people. Yet somehow, this brutal life of mine refused to release me from the solitary cell I was trapped in, right to the very end.
There were countless twists and turns along the way, but at the end of that long wandering, I finally decided to stop all my striving to become something I was not and instead to honor and accept my nature just as it is. In other words, I resolved that I would no longer force myself to pretend to be a good person, easygoing, unbothered, and sociable, but would instead follow my own inherent temperament, hide myself even further, and turn all the more thoroughly inward.
Perhaps no one will ever know how much changed after I embraced myself to the very depths of my being. Or perhaps, Goldmund, you might. As I grow older, I naturally find myself coming to understand that you, too, must have lived in much the same way, and that you, too, must be a person just as strange and broken as I am.
And so, just as I have done with myself, I now extend a hand of reconciliation to writing. If this is a destiny I cannot cast aside no matter how much I may try, then I intend, instead, not only to accept it fully, but also to make the most of the role I have been given in the smartest way I can, and even figure out how to have some fun riding it. For there is nothing as insignificant as writing, yet at the same time, writing is everything, the whole of everything. An alchemy in which, with nothing more than a single sheet of paper and a pencil, one can read the universe in a single grain of millet, transform a fleeting moment into eternity, or engrave a single line in someone's heart that will remain there for a lifetime. Perhaps we live on, believing in writing to the very end, because we can never forget the moment when we first laid eyes on that star.
With that in mind, Goldmund, I now intend to take pride in what I do and to pour my heart into it for a long time to come. Clad in this writing, both my armor and my weapon, I am set to stride right into the midst of the very people I have found so unbearable, and into the real stories of real human beings. For it is always within the hottest lava that the sharpest blade is forged and the most exquisite crystal is formed. In this way, until I reach your age, I am resolved to try with all my might to sublimate this sorrowful, lonely tragedy.
A life of writing often breaks our hearts, Goldmund. Yet I wish to become someone who is neither overwhelmed nor swayed by that pain, but rather someone who masters it. I want to become a grief greater than the grief within me that leaves me no choice but to write and makes it impossible for me to give up writing, so that in the end I may comfort and redeem that grief. In this way, by choosing, to the very end, to remain among people despite how hard I find them to endure, and by never letting go of the pen in my hand, pressing each word firmly onto the page even as I grumble continuously about the hardships of writing, I am becoming a grief deeper, firmer, and fiercer than in seasons past.
Goldmund, I will see it through. And so, I will absolutely save myself. So please believe in me. I will not tire so easily.