Daily Thought Entry I

Experiencing different communities and having conversations with new people widens our view of the world. Talking with children from other parts of the world, born with the different living qualities from myself, I was able to see that what I felt about society, and what I visualised to be the truth, was purely inaccurate. I still have a long journey of learning and experience ahead. However, I do have the passion to discover the parts of the world that I have not seen, experienced, or heard of before. I have the desire and intense curiosity to understand and feel both the joy and difficulties of different cultures, to see the world also in the way other individuals do.

This is because the truth is always more complex than how it is commonly told or accepted. It's always a step more complicated than how we understand it. My wish is to contribute in paving the path for a coexisting peace for different cultures around the world. Nevertheless, without understanding the truth in human cultures, and the fundamental reason why those who were before us had to experience the histories of disputes, conflicts, wars, and disrespect among existing communities, it would be impossible for coexistence to be achieved.

I often question whether I am against my own logic. That I may be judging the world based on the criteria that I have set about reality and the way humans must constantly struggle to uphold respect, love, and coexistence. However, though my ideals are yet vague in appearance when implemented in societies, I do feel that apathy in these matters is clearly not an answer to how one should live through the world. Because apathy means ignoring the responsibilities an individual is given to uphold the society that sustains and provides for them.

Living in South Korea, in the communities that I visit, I often find people who are painfully uninterested in the hardships others go through. Those stricken with poverty, war, natural disasters, and oppression, completely neglected. Although their apathy angered me to some degree, I was able to understand that they were also a part of a different culture.

Every day I wake up to greet the different sort of people in my community and country today and to read the news and familiarise myself with the happenings in the world, a sense of forlornness reaches my heart. Some, like those in my community, are apathetic, disinterested. They wake up each day in a week to carry on the busy life they have left for a while as they slept. Some are so indulged in their ideals and are biased with ideologies that they do not wish to widen their views of the world in the first place, and fail to see the reality.

Maybe, for human societies, such things called realities and truths do not exist. Everything is altered and shifted to the benefits of someone. People believe what they desire to believe, and silence the part of reality that they do not wish to see. Their views of the world are sometimes fixed to the benefits of themselves, sometimes to the values they pursue, and sometimes to their family, their local community, or their nation. As the responsibility to aid those who experience economic hardship lies on those who are affluent and abundant, and the responsibility to secure the liberal ideals and to maintain the watch on the leadership lies on the citizens of a democratic polity, the responsibility to persuade and cooperate with those who are apathetic or reproachful towards other cultures and the difficulties they face is laid on those who have the passion and the motivation to uphold coexistence, are willing to accept diversity, and are awake in the the thoughts they inspire for the day.