Busy Living or Busy Dying

By Jake Nho

``Get busy living or get busy dying." This is what Red says in the unforgettable movie ``Shawshank Redemption" before he heads out to the remote Mexican resort Zihuatanejo to rendezvous with a dear old friend.

For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, Red is the African-American man who, after being released after 40 years in jail for murder, was determined to go and find his buddy, Andy Dufrain, the former banker sentenced to life for allegedly killing his wife and her lover.

Dufrain escaped from the prison after 20 years of digging a tunnel out of his cell and crawling what Red referred to as 450 yards of excrement to freedom.

This still may not make a lot of sense. My point is, take a little time off to watch the movie if you haven't seen it yet. It is a very good one. I don't want to tell you how it ends but it does make you feel good inside.

And in that lies the story.

I had to go to a funeral Thursday (Nov. 5). Not the kind of funeral that you like to go to since the man, endowed with wealth and privilege since birth, decided to end his life at the age of 72.

Before hanging himself, according to police reports, he left a seven-page suicide note. Seven pages. This is a man who had many things to say. And, yet, he decided to go quietly.

He was quite a delightful man who loved a good boilermaker and had a wonderful laugh. But something made him choose a path of no return.

I knew another man who threw himself out of his 12th-floor office window, again a person born to money and prominence. At the end of that fall, in the wee hours of the morning, he was quite dead.

I could go on but I am trying to make a point.

This could be annoying or irritating for those who are older than I (I celebrated my 47th birthday recently) and I completely understand. But that is beside the point.

One thing I have noticed is that we call toddlers ``two years old" instead of ``two years young." But this actually makes perfect sense since we are headed toward death the minute we are born. Actually, the moment we are conceived.

Sometimes, we make a habit of saying things like ``80 years young" as a compliment although we all know that their time is coming. We all take it in good stride.

So what is there actually in life and death? We eventually die. This is a fact. The difference between life and death may seem enormous but for some, it is paper thin, seven pages thin.

There was another movie, ``The Last Samurai," starring, of course, Tom Cruise.

At the end of that movie, the young Japanese emperor (watch the film), asks how the hero died. Cruise says, "I will not tell you how he died, but how he lived."

I can rest my case here.

As I paid my final respects to the person who I obviously will never again see, I told myself that I would rather get busy living than get busy dying, if for no other reason than I could not bear not seeing my lovely wife and my wonderful children. And this is something I would never be able to forgive myself for, both in life and in death

The 47-year-young writer has been working at The Korea Times for 25 years. He can be reached at jakenho@koreatimes.co.kr.