Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Born In California, Then Nothing Happened

I was thinking to work on a biography about my grandfather until I opened this site on ‘NPR six word memoirs’. I, just out of curiosity (I had no idea what a 'six word memoir' is), clicked the 'next' button on the screen and felt myself getting more and more involved into it. When I finally finished seeing every single one of them, I picked out some that I was interested in, and looked at some different sites. In the end, I felt that this memoir, 'born in California, then nothing happened', spoke to me the most.

The picture on the right is the picture of my family when I was about 2years old. Now, as an eighth grader, I'm not sure what exactly has changed because of the existence of me. Nothing happened except that my parents are much more stressed, a few utensils in our house broke, and...my sister is stressed.

I think (and hope) that most other people are feeling this way too, because as middle school students, we (yet) have no impact in our society, although some of us may have the potential to. The author, Mark Harris, probably felt the same way except that now, by creating this memoir, he has touched some people's feelings.

After reading this quote, instead of feeling relieved that I'm not the only one feeling useless of themselves, I had a feeling of motivation to work harder so that ‘something’ does happen. I don’t exactly know why, but I think that’s the reason why this quote was so touching and spoke to me. This links back to my quote (blog entry #1), ‘patience and fortitude conquer all things’. Although the memoir that spoke to me was ‘Born in Seoul (California), then nothing happened’, I’ll be more mature and hard working in high school so that when I graduate university and become an adult, I could say that ‘Born in Seoul (California), worked hard with patience and fortitude, conquered all challenges. Something did happen indeed’.


The picture on the right is me in a weird posture beside my cousin, Joseph Bae. This cousin of mine was a brilliant student in elementary school, but started to be a lazy a bit in middle school. However, after realizing 'something' from my grandfather's lectures about the Korean proverb 'animals leave their skins when their dead, but humans leave their names when their dead', he totally changed his lifestyle and went to a very good university in the US.


I've also been very lazy these past years, but from next year, as a high schooler, this six word memoir, 'born in California, then nothing happened', and the Korean proverb which gives a similar motivation to people will have an impact on me.