It is only now, after reaching this age, that I can finally bring myself to make this confession: I have always found human relationships very difficult.
Sometime in my twenties, when I was going through what, looking back now, was the most difficult period of my life, I happened to meet, purely by chance, one of the most renowned shamans in South Korea. And that person told me that I was someone who had lived many lifetimes as a religious person or a reclusive spiritual practitioner. Of course, I do not blindly believe what that person said, and there must have been countless acquired factors that made me the person I am, someone who is rather awkward in human relationships. But the moment I heard those words, I felt as though the countless things tangled up inside me had all come undone at once, and I found myself nodding without even realizing it. And so, ever since then, whenever relationships become difficult again, I try not to take things too seriously, simply thinking that perhaps I am receiving the karma I have accumulated over many lifetimes.
Yet what I still find difficult to understand is that, although human relationships have always been so difficult for me, my longing for others and my yearning for human connection have always been just as strong. So I often find myself experiencing the paradox, the strange sense of division that arises when those two things fail to align.
For example, I find myself unable to speak to the very people I most want to become close to. Or, while I care deeply about others' well-being and whether they have spent their day safely and peacefully, I am not particularly fond of small talk without a clear purpose, often leading to the misconception that I am a closed-off person. Moreover, because my desire to understand human existence, and especially myself, more deeply and more accurately is so intense, my attention is frequently absorbed by whatever subject of inquiry I happen to be fixated on at the time, something far removed from what people are generally interested in. Consequently, I sometimes make absurd mistakes in other areas.
Looking back, through all those twists and turns that accumulated and became entangled over the years, I have ended up losing so many people I truly never wanted to lose.
What I find intriguing, however, is that there are times in life when someone I once encountered suddenly reappears on an entirely different page of my life in a completely different form, though whether this is merely an illusion of mine or something more, I have no way of knowing. Though almost everything about them, from their appearance to their way of life, may be completely different, beyond such surface-level differences, like waves rising and falling, the soul or essential energy they carry is so unmistakably similar that, upon seeing them, two points instantly connect with an intuitive conviction: “Ah, this is that person!”
And especially when that person happens to be someone I once longed to grow close to, but ultimately had to lose or let go of due to the various circumstances I mentioned earlier, such a strange reunion opens my eyes wide, as if it were an opportunity sent from heaven to set right what once went wrong.
The woman I met today was just such a person to me. A mother of six, a passionate business owner, and a mental health therapist herself, she had entered her forties only to find burnout and early symptoms of menopause compounding one another, leaving her unable to hold her center as she once had. In the midst of all this, after searching high and low for a practitioner who was the right fit, she somehow happened upon me, though I am hardly widely known, and drove for over thirty minutes all the way here.
Yet what was truly remarkable was that, although we had never met in our lives, the very moment I looked straight at her face as she stepped out of the car, I felt an instant, intuitive conviction: “Ah, this is that person from my memory!” And as I slowly took in the presence before me once more, I saw that despite every difference, race, nationality, culture, and language, their very beings, beyond all those layers, overlapped so undeniably.
Ordinarily, I would have burst into exaggerated laughter at this little trick life was playing on me, but I could not behave that way in front of a client I had just met. So I steadied my breath, gathered myself, and brought my mind fully back into the present. Then, determined not to let this opportunity heaven had given me slip away, I immersed myself completely and guided our conversation forward.
And in moments like that, though it is not easy to put into words, there are times when my senses seem to race far faster than my mind, almost as though I were completely drunk. Then, as the fragmentary pieces of information and details she shows begin to interlock closely with one another, I find myself able to vaguely grasp even those parts of her that she never directly spoke of. Or sometimes, even something like a single sentence that cuts straight through the situation she is in forms all on its own in my subconscious and simply slips out of my mouth.
his is by no means to suggest that I possess some mystical ability to see right through people. To draw an analogy, a veteran chef can deduce all the ingredients and cooking techniques just by looking at a single photo of a dish, and an experienced chick sexer develops a sense sharp enough to discern a tiny creature's sex with just a single brief touch. In much the same way, having long plunged deep into the abyss with an oxygen tank on my back to observe, explore, and experiment in order to better understand my own body and mind, I, too, have naturally developed the habit of closely reading and acutely sensing not only my own, but also the bodies and minds of others in fine detail.
Thus, once I safely reach that ignition point through deep immersion, it is no longer so difficult for me to fathom why a person has come to find me and what I can do for them.
Yet, when I ponder why such a reunion feels so particularly special to me, I realize it may not be entirely because of the person right in front of my eyes. In truth, what I often come to see most vividly within that reunion is the journey I myself have gone through, from unintentionally missing that one person, through going round and round countless years of time, all the way to facing them once again. The layers of time, accumulated layer upon layer as deep as the history of the universe, can all fit inside a fleeting reunion like a single grain of millet, and even unfold all at once like a panorama. I suppose it is ultimately a secret seen and heard by me alone.
And so, the reason I pour everything I have into a reunion with someone who has reappeared before me after years is that, on the surface, it is a love letter carrying the apologies and longing I was never able to convey to someone I once lost, but more fundamentally, it is a hand of salvation extended to myself, a hand of encouragement, consolation, and reconciliation, to the self who has thrown itself into the flames and endured harsh forging so as not to repeat that same heartbreak from the past separation to this very day.
When such a special meaning is loaded into a single session, how should I put it, there are times when my immersion transcends my own will, and the session soars freely to a place that would be difficult to reach on my own. No, perhaps it might be nothing other than having poured my entire self into that time and space, over and over, to the point of exhaustion, just to unravel things that have been knotted for a very long time, much like a shamanic cleansing ritual.
In any case, after the session ended, her face had brightened noticeably, and her eyes were brimming with overwhelming emotion. We promised to meet again before long, and because consistently maintaining a good impression is far more difficult and important than leaving a good impression just once, I knew very well that I would continue to do my absolute best for her, just as I always have.
After seeing her off and returning to the empty office, as if I had truly become the reclusive practitioner that shaman had once told me I was, I closed all the windows, drew the curtains, turned on the desk lamp, turned off the lights, and once again hid myself away in that deep and familiar silence.