짙은 (Zitten) – 잘 지내자, 우리 (Until the Day)

Let’s talk people. From our perspectives, we can categorize people into roughly five groups: strangers, friends, family, significant other, and ourselves (unless you’re a non-imp Lannister, then it’d be four). I would like to dedicate each of them a post of its own, in that order, so I’ll have the chance to decide against posting anything on the latter half as it may become “too much”, even for myself.
I suppose when it comes to evaluating others, the question of whether we “should” comes before whether we “could”. Even if people could be understood, analyzed, and judged, should we? Thinking that I understood someone has already led me to see how little I actually did, and for someone who lives for the consistency and predictability of life, it’s no doubt unsettling to have to accept that I can’t decide for others simply because I’m not them. In these posts, I won’t be be talking about those five groups per se, but each of them in relation to myself. Who am I to the strangers and who are the strangers to me? Who am I to myself? (If I get there.)
Apathy has always been my worst best quality (or some may say the best worst). In this day and age of political correctness and pseudo-philanthropy, the term apathy has been bastardized; suddenly, not caring about the starving children in Africa is a crime. Sure, voluntary apathy may be wrong, but is there even such a thing as voluntary apathy? We don’t care because we don’t. Perhaps we can voluntarily sympathize, or even empathize, but not “apathize”, as that is the natural state we begin with. Sure, some may say it’s our mammalian instinct, or even our duty, as homo sapiens under the order of primates, to help each other. Then to that I’d say it’s our mammalian instinct, but maybe not our duty, to compete with each other and be selfish with those we don’t love in this limited environment. I make the point not to say we all see each other as competition, because I don’t, but to counter the argument that “caring for strangers is how things should be”. Not caring for others is not wrong, and in my opinion, apathy is the neutral state that we should see strangers as.

That’s not to say that caring for others is wrong; I’d even say it’s good. But I’m not at a place where I can care for others, because I’m not even at the “apathy” stage when it comes to strangers. I have a tendency to forget that we’re all people of our own, that the person sitting across from me on the subway is who that person would call I . For every single person I see, there’s an I . And who am I in the eyes of all these different I ‘s? My young naive self would’ve proudly said “I don’t care,” but now I do. And it’s not because we live in a society with rules and restrictions, culture and meme, it’s something simpler than that. I want to be liked. I would say I care more about what people think of me than what I think of them. My biggest insecurities come from judging myself in the eyes’ of others, and what I think the others think of me determines what I would think of them (might want to read that three times). Even for people I’ve never met before, if I believe they wouldn’t like me for whatever reason, however superficial these reasons may be, I would say “I don’t like them” in return. That’s not apathy, and that’s wrong.

So for me, that’s what strangers are: eyes. I don’t judge people, I judge myself (And I think a large part has to do with my Korean roots. Most of us are as self-conscious as we’re self-righteous, and as someone who’s felt rejected from both cultures, where I’m a “banana” or an “eagle” in Korea and a FoB in the US, this is a struggle of it’s own. I suppose I’ll save this for the final post.). It’ll be a slow change, getting to where I can see people with total apathy, and from there, to where I can see even the strangers as real people with real thoughts and emotion. But hey, self-awareness is the first step to self-betterment, right?

You should really watch the music video, it’s iite.