hometown, life, essay

I was born and raised in the city. There were many people everywhere in my hometown, Incheon. Crowd and bubbling were the proper adverbs for the city.

The bus was always full, and unless it was the last stop, it was more of a luxury to sit down. The six-lane road was always filled with cars, and the intersection and the six-lane road were common. Countless people walked every day on the crosswalk across the range. I wondered where these people were hiding, but no answer came out. Things were not much different when night came. The streets were always a mixture of safety and danger, mixed with students, adults and drunkards. I grew up going back and forth in that crazy street a few times. Passing through the skyscrapers and splendid neon signs, there was our house close to the moon on the hill. It was around that time that I felt that the city was a double space. The splendor and shabby were so sharply divided that one alley between them. It was indeed a city-like coolness.

Still, there were some good things about the city. All the amenities were close and public transportation was active. But it was too much. Everywhere I went, thanks to those who were too much, my back always had to sweat. So I wanted to get out of the city. But for me, who had lived only in a complex city for 18 years, it was strange to me that it was not a city. As a young man, I had no courage to endure the unfamiliarity, so I just managed to manage to live in my hometown and its adjacent areas. Buses and subways became more and more difficult, and I searched hard for a deserted place, but I couldn’t find a satisfactory place. Well, there were too many people to exist in a deserted place. In the meantime, there was a university that was aiming for. The university was a national university, so its tuition was very low, and it was also a recognized university in the line of the Normal University. At that time, my grades were higher as my family became poorer, so my grades were not too difficult to go to go to the university. I also liked the fact that the school was located in the ‘gun’ area of a strange provincial city for the first time in my life.

In unconsciousness I might have wanted to leave this painful city. I remember the moment when I visited the university with my family to have an interview after passing the first round of college. We arrived after a small two-hour long journey in Incheon. It was freezing cold that day. The arm of the old tteokbokki coat was dirty with lint, but it was the neatest coat, so I wore it. Perhaps the circumstances of parents’ coats were not much different.

The school was really located in the countryside. Darak-ri, Cheongwon-gun. I thought there was only a ‘dong’ in the world. My world was that small. There were no tall buildings around the university, and there were very few shops, so it was quiet. There were also a few people. Everything was different from the world I lived in. When I raised my head, the sky was immeasurably wide. So I became a college student. Friends from the city were frustrated with this school. Every weekend, students dived into Seoul, their hometown, and adjacent cities such as Cheongju and Daejeon. But I liked this place more and more. I liked it very much, too.

First of all, the sky was wide and there were few people, so it was always quiet and there were many trees. I lied down on the bench whenever I felt like walking around the school. The sky lying down and looking was so wide that it was full of two eyes. At night the broad sky was filled with twinkling stars. At first, I was surprised to see the clear air because there weren’t many cars, and the stars were so visible. For me, a terrible liberal arts student, science time has always been a tough one, so I don’t know much about constellations, but the stars sparkled endlessly and it led me to a distant beauty. Living in the country, I was absorbed in nature. I felt keenly that the change of seasons was so beautiful. I was happy every spring, summer, fall, and winter. I was grateful to be able to watch the process of blooming flowers, greenery, fallen leaves, and snow falling under the great sky.

The life made me know myself. I realized at this time that I was not greedy than I thought, easily happy with smaller things than I thought, and loved nature more than I thought. Life has become simpler and happiness has grown. Sometimes I suffered from strange frustration when I went up to my hometown.

It was then that the sentence ‘I want to live in the valley’ was engraved deep in my heart. And according to that wish, I take a new root in a place other than a city. Often people ask. Why don’t you live in a city, and don’t you feel stuffy living there where there’s nothing?” Then I always say. No, this life is really happy and good. And there’s everything you need to live. Sometimes it’s enough to get some city air in your nostrils. To me, this endless expanse of sky is the most precious thing.