Listening to stories in a hellish battlefield?
When I worked for certain organizations (or companies) in the past, I used to feel that I was not cut out to be a salaried worker, I would have troubles in human relations including with bosses, colleagues and subordinates as well. Nothing was easy for me. Probably for this reason, as I got older, I came to work as a freelancer much more. Of course, there are difficulties for freelance workers such as the uncertainty of continuing employment, unstable income and precarious social status. Nonetheless, nowadays I am quite content with myself.
A couple of days ago, I found some impressive comments on a certain YouTube video. They were about the difficulties of being a salary worker in companies and quitting your job. What caught my attention was these words: however hard the work may have been, you are thrown into a new war and hell once you quit. I realized again that I have actually been living in a hellish battlefield from teh time I quit my job at that company.
Just the day before, I was about to get up in the morning, feeling a bit tired. Suddenly, I got a phone call from an unknown number. Answering it, I could hear a woman’s exasperated, high-tone voice. “Are you the owner of the car number ----? Why did you park your car here? Residents of my villa can’t get in. Please move the car right now.” Her furious, sharp voice was heard continuously. “I am so sorry. Last night, my parking lot machine was out of order, So, I had no other choice...” Even before I finished, she interrupted, saying sharply, “That is none of my concern. What can others do if you park your car here?” “I am really sorry. I am going down now.” I kept on apologizing quickly.
Hearing the woman’s sharp voice, I felt nervous and trembled a bit. Ah, This is one of the very parking conflicts that I had only heard about in the news. Before things got worse, I quickly moved my car. It was a small commotion in the morning.
I have often heard news of bad incidents, crimes and even murders due to parking disputes. In this densely populated city of Seoul, houses and buildings of cement and concrete are close together while the flowers, grass, trees and lakes of nature vanishing. As the number of cars has increased, it is natural that there is less and less parking, and that there are parking wars. People seem to be callous and have not much room in their hearts. Even I feel that I don’t have anyone around my home whom I can think of as a neighbor. Even if I happen to come across folks living in the same floor of the same building, I usually don’t say hello to them. Nor do they.
They say that human beings are social, political animals. That is to say that a human being cannot live by himself or herself, and they make a group or community in order to survive and achieve. There have been various kinds of groups and communities. German sociologist F. Toennies in 19th century classified them into "gesellschaft" and "gemeinschaft." To put it simply, while one means so-called profit-pursuing groups, the other signifies caring, traditional bond groups of not pursuing profit. I feel that as time goes by, there are less and less gemeinschaft communities where I can feel at home, warm and safe, talking freely.
Yuval Harari, a famous historian in Israel, said that humans are storytellers. Humans cannot live alone, they listen to others’ stories and evaluate, judge whether the stories are helpful to them or not and behave (retell the stories to others) accordingly. Thus humans are a being of listening to as well as telling stories. Stories reflect thoughts and thoughts reflect stories. When stories are warm and fine so that our minds and lives get warm, our lives will become warm and happier. Today I heard tense stories through sharp, exasperated voices, though I prefer to tell warm and fine stories.
Lee Nan-hee studied English in college and theology at Hanshin University.