Spring > IDEAS & IDEALS

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Spring comes from the ice and snow. It is still cold outside. Temperature drops below zero more often than not. Wind is chilly. No flowers. No songs of birds. You are still carrying that heavy overcoat on you. But one day you find the stove at your office is not burning as usual in the morning and feel sorry for it. Yet it is spring inevitably, simply because you are in the month of March.

     Spring is capricious. The balmy weather of April morning promises you a good picnic, but the unruly wind in the afternoon destroys it ruthlessly by blowing sand in your picnic lunch and in your eyes. The blooming forthysia bush is alluring enough for a foolish and early butterfly to try its fragile wings over it, but, alas, it learns only too late that forthysias bloom anytime, even in dead winter, when there is enough sunshine. Three warm days in succession completely disarm you physically and psychologically, and leave you in bed with a bad cold. Children are already in the swimming hole to cool their hot body, yet it is spring because you are still in May.

     Spring is illusory. It makes you feel that you have fallen in a long and deep sleep, or on a long trip away from home, or have been idle during winter. But none of us could have been so. We were busy all the time; could not afford to be idle. Our sleep could not be long and deep. It was always disturbed by the endless worries and anxieties. We had no money and time to spend and nowhere to go. But spring has the magical power of creating an illusion that you have been enjoying an idyllic life somewhere in a peaceful world until now.

     Spring is commanding. It commands you to wake up and do something anew, and you cannot avoid the order. It demands you to be busy. And you obey the order faithfully. Farmers sow the seeds and drive the cattle out into the fields. Young men and women fall in love and get married. Workers demand more money and go on strike. Students open books with new resolutions. We do all these in spring with passion and enthusiasm unknown to us in other seasons. With the retreat of winter and the thawing of the frozen ground, our fathers in the cave observed these rituals without fail, and also our sons working in an office in a Manhattan skyscraper will willingly.

     Spring is disappearing. Technically it will remain on the calender, but much of the essence of the season, along with the beautiful myths associated with it, has already disappeared. Before the advance of human technology not only spring but also the other seasons have lost much of their distinctive nature that separates one from the other. In the greenhouses farmers are busy all the year round growing vegetables of every variety. With the air-conditioners and central heating system you can work in comfort disregarding the temperature outside. You can ski in summer and swim in winter. There is no reason for the travelers in The Canterbury Tales to wait until April for their pilgrimage to start. Buses are waiting for them all the time. Science conquers all.

     Are you saying, then, that you are unfeeling or indifferent or dull to the coming of spring this year? Are you saying that it is useless to count much upon it anymore for the virtues and ideals identified with it -- youth, hope, renewal, desire? Are you tired of looking at the meadows and woods turning green? Are you bored of the cherry blossoms in full bloom this spring? No, I am not. The real problem with me is that I feel different in the spring this year. I feel I am too much particular about it. I am afraid I am too much absorbed in and possessed by it. I see it, hear it, smell it, feel it, and touch it. I can even love its sand-blowing wind and its wild, chaotic, and unpredictable weather. I have never been like this before.

     Spring this year is with me. I am not looking at it, as I always did in the past, through the hindsight with regret, remorse, and reminiscence after it is gone. I am watching every inch of its progress day by day. I wish I could register it hour by hour, nay minute by minute by any means. I find that a miracle is not a sudden, unexpected, strange turning of event, but a slow and patient accumulation of small and familiar things. This spring I am not surprised by the miracle, but by how a miracle is being made.

     What's the matter with me? Is something wrong with me? What is so special about the spring this year? What makes me cling so desperately to it? My age, definitely. I came to realize, after having counted it forty-nine times, that my spring in my life had gone long before, and with it all my wild, unruly, chaotic passions, hopes, vanities, and ambitions, and left in its place a mild, subdued, tamed, and compromising coward behind. I was not wise enough to love my youth then when I had it. Now I want to love it, cherish it, and savor it, but it is gone, gone forever. This is why I stand and stare at the magnolia blossoms so long, absent-mindedly, with pain in my heart, this spring.
          (April 15, 1989)