On a warm early April day

By Kim Jin-hyun

On a warm Saturday morning in early April, I went to the library to finish a long-delayed task. The weather was so warm I gave up. Instead, I drove to the small area of land at the back of my newly transferred school building and began to work on the earth with a rake for one and a half hours.

Since I have cultivated vegetables for many years, the more I dug the soil, the more comfortable I became, even though I found my palms were swollen and my body was tired. Moreover, numerous birds flew down from nearby trees to get some worms.

To get some rest, I looked around the gardens in the school. Purple magnolias and cherry trees were blooming. All the trees around me had green and red leaves. All looked fresh and sappy, and they were responding in a lively way to the sunshine.

Nevertheless, I had worn thick clothes, due to the lingering wintry weather, and stayed at my office all day on account of my busy schedule. Most people also thought that early spring in April wasn't a suitable time to stay outside to enjoy the flowers and new leaves.

Thus, I considered the early signs of spring to be mere signals that the season would arrive soon. I hadn't enjoyed them, nor recognized how quickly the season would arrive from around the corner. I had almost missed them because I was so busy. As a result, though spring had come, my body was still in winter. Whenever I had a chance to select and judge, I made numerous errors because of my ignorance or negligence. To make matters worse, absurdity accumulated within my family, societies and the organizations I am involved with, making me think more seriously about life.

A novelist who wrote about this kind of absurdity in life was Albert Camus. He tried to express the inevitable absurdity in societies in his novel, "L’etranger," in which his character Mersault killed a man because of the sun.

This symbolism in the book was about the absurdities in reality in those days. In other words, it meant the protagonist recognized and responded to who he was through his relationship with society.

Thankfully, my nature- friendly attitude helped me to escape from my routine lifestyle. Since then, though the weather was still chilly and windy, I have gone out and tried to enjoy spring festivals on the mountains and in the fields as soon as I have found the free time to do so.

But the faces of the people I met were shrunken, with fixed expressions.

It was not just a matter of weather, but rather one of their emotions or attitudes. It was because they had become trapped in a collective state of competitiveness or relative deprivation. Their bodies were living, but their souls appeared to be entombed. Thus, they succumbed to spring as a season of despair and depression.

Worse still, violence, crime and incidents of suicide continue to increase in this beautiful season. It has left people in a vegetative state. Therefore, April may indeed be the cruelest month. Nevertheless, even in this hopeless situation, human beings are great because we don't forget our dreams. While pursuing and fulfilling our dreams, we should enjoy the essence of this spring. This means we should enjoy and share it with everyone we meet.

Above all, we should restore our own emotions by having more time to visit fields or mountains or by allowing ourselves to feel pleasure and savor the secret of life through the grass or flowers. Also, we should do so by learning songs, or by reading great books.

Through these practices, this spring should be a turning point in motivating youngsters to enjoy their lives. As a way of doing this, we should encourage them to accept the following messages," All students are flowers. Thus, they should find time to enjoy themselves and blossom. Also, it is natural that adults whisper lovely thoughts, get married and have babies during spring season."

As soon as they notice and accept this, youngsters will focus on singing ``Ode to spring in April." Then, spring will truly be spring.

The writer is an English teacher at Yeosu High School in South Jeolla Province. His email address is shinykim60@hanmail.net.