The bliss of peace is made of these: a baby’s laughter, the soft flurry touches of my cats on my face, and their purring and meowing, listening to my favorite tunes and singing along alone, getting my hair done nicely, saying I love you to my cats with their little hearts on my heart.
Peace may be transient, a precariously illusory daydreaming, or a timed reprieve from existential responsibilities. Still, peace is happiness when the breeze of peace envelopes me with a fragrance of acacia and takes me to the sea of skies.
I believe a family is the nursery of a society, a nation, and the world. Whether it is headed by a parent or parents or a de facto breadwinner in the form of a non-disabled child, one thing is certain that good parenting is absolutely required for nesting humanity. That said, I will propose a law enacted for a qualified parent or parents who are mentally and physically able to nurture and nourish their children regardless of class and ethnicity.
I believe there are no evil children, contrary to the popularity of demon children from Damien in Omen to Rosemary’s baby. Still, only bad parenting can produce the so-called demon children hell-bent on destroying humanity. For instance, so many convicted killers had disastrous childhoods destroyed by parental violence, from beating, swearing, and molestation to humiliation and degradation. How can you beat such a little child just because they are troublesome or bothersome? And it doesn’t matter the level of education or social status of a parent for the crime of child abuse. Not all of us are made for parents with maternal or paternal instincts, not because we are inherently evil, but simply because we are not for the roles.
Therefore, I believe there should be a legal touchstone for being a good parent before having a child. If a mother or father is not ready to bring a child into this world and show him or her the beauty of life through thunder and lightning, then don’t be. Not everyone should be a parent.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Three books that have planted Tree of Golden Apples in my mind’s garden are the following elementals:
1. Recollections: An Autobiography by Viktor Frankl – Dr. Frankl was the father of Logotherapy, one of the three Viennese Schools of Psychotherapies, who practiced what he believed and experienced. Far from an armchair scholar in the Ivory Tower out of touch with the crowd, Dr. Frankl gave hope, not as a delusional escape from the burdens of reality or dangerous daydream, such as Thuclides defined as the nature of hope, but as a beacon of light in the darkness of the soul crying for help. It’s because he was a survivor of the hell on earth, called Auschwitz, and other circles of hell under Nazi-ruled Austria. He wrote other books, which I have read, but this book pales others because it shows him not as a scholar but as a human soul whose spirit we all possess and, therefore, can relate to.
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte – This is the book I can never get bored with. Since I received the book at the tender age of twelve in Korea, I have always loved it and returned to it when I feel lonely, very lonely, and lonely in this big, wide, cold world. Jane is my soul sister, and we have things in common. And I see what kind of woman Charlott Bronte was different from many people who like to claim. I like her works more than her contemporary peer, Jane Austen.
3. Why I Write by George Orwell – This is a small pamphlet-like book. I carry it around when I feel like doing nothing, yet doing something resourceful and thoughtful to keep myself from mentally procrastinating. People tend to think writing belongs to intellectuals when it isn’t. It’s a record of personal existence through written communication to express one’s inner world within the outer world. But many people, including professionally established writers, like to think that writing is a form of art that belongs to the ether. It’s not, and the purpose of writing is simple. Orwell’s points of view agree with mine.
These are the books that I always come back like trusty bosom friends who can keep secrets besides my two cats.
I hear every Sunday morning Mass at 7:00 with my mom, a paragon of a medieval pious Catholic woman who thinks not praying daily will not save a soul from disgrace. But I have not confessed since God knows when because I would feel more comfortable confiding in a paid listener with life experience than an unmarried man.
To put more weight on blasphemy, I have paid more attention to daily fortune-telling according to my Zodiac animal sign. The amber of faith is still flickering in me, but the spirit revolts against no feedback from the most incredible man above. Sometimes, I wonder how many lives I have lived before being what and who I am when things are not going well. Will I step on a picture of Mother Mary if Christian persecution rises again?
Amid waves of doubt and amiss, sometimes I am surprised to see myself sending a letter to God, pleading, complaining, demanding, requesting, and hardly thanking. And what about my exclamatory recourse to God when I feel scared after watching horror movies?
So, does it evidence I still practice Catholicism?
What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
all the heartaches give me headaches.
I try not to overthink about things I can’t change or control. I care too much about people’s reactions and feelings at work and home because, as someone with acute sensory perceptions, all my nerves are tuned to the reception, making them exhausted and pained.
For example, I get very agitated by the total silence created by the other in a room. I have a co-worker who says nothing all day, as if I were invisible in the same office. It bothers me and makes me uncomfortable. I then try to analyze and reason for such behavior, always finding faults in me for being introverted. It only makes my already complex psyche intricated like Gordion’s Knot that only can be let loose by one fell swoop of Alenxader’s sword.
Alexander and the Gordion’s Knot
But I don’t need Alxander’s help to cut the Gordian’s Knot because I have the sword. It is Excaliber in my mind that is waiting for me to wield it. With one fell swoop of the blade, I will be able to cut the intricate knot of wrecked nerves, troubled neurons, and interrupted connections between the sparks of the thoughts that will clear away the impurities on the mind so that I can have a clear mind and lively spirit.
It’s always unexpected. This moment of Eureka of life. Or so it seems. Finding meaning in life is like searching for a lost star destined to be mine and yours when it falls from its journey to see you and me.
I am still looking for my lost star, but sometimes, I want to give all up, facing stripes of existential dilemmas, crossing the vicissitudes of life that I don’t want to. At those times when I want to quit everything and leave this world, my eyes meet the eyes of my cats, who need my care and love. Then they come to me and rub their little flurry heads against my hands, legs, and heart, sending me the pulses of life all over my body, entering the palace of the soul.
Small pleasures and simple joys keep me going like the Energizer Bunny beating the drum in an energetic march of celebrated longevity. My cats need me, and the need for care gives me a reason to continue this search for my star in life.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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