sacrifice for hope

If a lot of rain is labeled as cat and dogs, it's raining tigers and bears in Seoul. Ha.ha. We've pretty much been getting rain non.stop for the past two weeks, save for a two day break in there somewhere. I'll tell you, rain is splendid when you're holed up nice and cozy with a bowl of popcorn and a good movie on the screen. It's not quite so splendid when you've got to walk around in it all day. It's pretty darn miserable, in fact.

But let's go past that. Past the rain. Past the drenched clothes. Past the extra weight of carrying around an umbrella. Past the inevitable splash from cars zooming by. We've more important things to discuss and explore. Such as the end times that is predicted on the Mayan calendar. I kid.

One of the joys I've had during my time in Corea are the my weekly meals I take with my father. These "sessions" have allowed me into the mind of the man who bears the title of "dad" but has done little in the past fifteen years to truly earn it. He's been the translucent and shadowy figure unable or perhaps unwilling to fill the vacant chair at the dinner table all these years. For so long he was simply that. The missing one. The one that left. The yearly phone call.

So, I'm fortunate enough to now get to know him as a person. I'm beginning to fill in the middle part of that venn diagram I had created for him. The left side was the ideal father. The right side was my father, equivalent of Darth Vader in my childhood and adolescence. The middle has become reality. He's no longer an evil blurry silhouette in the lurking in my memories. Nor do I believe is there a perfect mold of a man who could actually be the perfect father. However, there is a man. There is a man who has been broken. There is a man who has regrets. There is a man who believes.

That man is my father. A dreamer in his youth. A dreamer with big plans, big ambitions, big hopes, as a young man should have. Yet when things didn't go his way, he was unable to sacrifice. I say unable and not unwillingly because as I get to know this man, I see that it is not in his nature to sacrifice. To him, his goals were and still are black and white. One way or no way. He couldn't sacrifice for the love of his wife. He couldn't sacrifice for the love of his children. To this day he lives without sacrifice. I see it in his face. I hear it in his voice. I feel it in our conversations.

Yet his deep set convictions stirs in me both outrage and pity. Anger because I still can't get it through my twenty-six year old mind that this old man doesn't understand what it is to sacrifice. Pity because he was unable to witness the beautiful sacrifice my mother made. A sacrifice made out of both necessity and of love. Inability to sacrifice can hurt those around you immensely. Most fortunately, I saw and felt the sacrifice my mother made for her family. Most fortunately, her acts have given us hope. Hope from cynicism. Hope from doubt and pessimism. Therefore I still hope for this man who is filled with empty ambition, empty hope. I hope for this man who is unable to sacrifice, for when you sacrifice, I believe you give hope to others.