Memory of my notebook

By Kim See-bong

It seems only yesterday I was so nervous and excited about greeting 2011, the Year of the Rabbit. I celebrated with a special resolution in a new notebook because this year signals the arrival of the last phase of my life, ``hwan-gap.”

How time flies! Now a cold winter has given way to spring. Spring will not be long, and summer will soon come. I am reviewing the initial resolution I made in my new notebook on New Year's Day.

In my primary school days, a new notebook was a pleasant surprise we could expect only once a year when the new school year began. For me, because my family was not rich enough to buy me new notebooks each semester, my father used to make them. I was always proud because they were real masterpieces thanks to my father's dexterity.

Each time I left for school with the masterpieces my father had made for me the night before, I used to reaffirm my resolution: I will study harder to return the thanks I owe to my father. I will keep the notebooks neat and clean to please my parents and new teacher.

This year the Year of the Rabbit returns in a sexagenarian cycle. In the Orient, it is believed that human life is predestined in accordance with the year, month, date and time of one's birth. A day is divided by the 12 horary signs, and the 12 signs are represented by 12 animals. By additional delicate calculations based on the five elements of Nature, a human life is on the whole pre-programmed.

Accordingly, every 5th cycle falls on the 60th anniversary of one's birth and we call this han-gap. I was born 60 years ago this year by the lunar calendar with the same traits as a rabbit.

A rabbit is fecund, self-protective and smart but simultaneously emotional and eventful, though lacking in perseverance. Reflecting on my past, this prophecy sounds plausible.

This 60th anniversary connotes that my age is starting to count toward the last part of my life and from now on each year is another lease of life according to the ancestral belief that life over 60 is hard to survive, though today this is regarded as narrative in a fairy tale.

With the sexagenarian Year of the Rabbit I resolved that I am only 20 years old in mind, just a freshman, and would live an unregrettable life. Then my heart beat again as it did on receiving the notebooks my father made fifty years ago. This time, this is a notebook for the overdue homework of my life.

According to Confucius, I have reached the age for heaven. I must be careful in filling the new pages of the special notebook. I should be thankful for the notebook as I was for those my father made for me.

I reaffirm my resolution just as I did half a century years ago. I will keep the remaining notebook of life clean. It should be filled with stories which do not require repentance later. It should be a record in which all the previous mistakes are atoned for and all the debts I owe to others should be cleared. It should be a story so ideal and without regret and promising to make up for all the mistakes committed by my stupidity, while ignorant of the blessings of youth.

Now I ask myself where I am in the cause of my New Year's resolution.

The writer is the principal of Polyglot Day School in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province. He can be reached at seebongkim@gmail.com.