By Jesung Lee
The question hits me like the unforgiving wind on a freezing day. I had just gotten off the plane, and after a mad scramble to immigration in which surely a few of the world's fastest men were present (If Usain Bolt had been present, I am sure that he would have been the last of the pack. That is, assuming he wouldn't have been pushed down and trampled on by the horde of people.) The line, as expected, moved at a snail's pace, and I found myself lulled back to sleep in the stagnant airport air. I was unbelievably tired from the flight, emotionally drained from another farewell to my parents, and as is the case with any return to school, worried.
It is hardly an unfamiliar question, one that everyone finds in their heads at one point in their lives. It is a question that has been asked from the beginning of mankind and one that everyone has found different answers to. It is one that even the most brilliant thinkers in history have struggled with, which, of course, leaves a nonexistent chance that I will be able to answer it.
What am I? At a first glance, the question may seem a bit ridiculous, and one may laugh at the unexpectedness of it. However, it is quite a serious question. The generalness of this question makes it extremely challenging, if it is indeed possible, to completely answer. However, in this particular situation I found myself wondering about it in the context of my allegiance to a country. The dark green passport that I held my hand informed me that I was a citizen of the Republic of Korea, with other millions of people whom I had just left; and in the official view of things, that should be all the answer that I need.
However, I find the question a bit more complex than that. I have lived a majority of my life in the U.S, though I was born in Korea. I attend school in America and have not fully experienced the severity and rigor of the education system. I speak English fluently, and though I communicate fine with my Korean, though more recently I find myself stumbling. For me, it is the most heartbreaking and horrifying of feelings to observe myself losing what I consider an inseparable part of me. At school, my friends often comment on how they sometimes forget that I am a foreigner, and joke about how different from the stereotypical Korean that I am (fascinated by history, unimpressed by math, utterly captivated by the beauty of writing and debate.)
So the passport doesn't tell the entire story. Then, perhaps, it is those around me who can offer a better explanation. Perhaps it is those eyebrows raised by older Koreans at my stumbling Korean that tell the most, or all the entry stamps on my passport of which there are too many to count. However, even in those, no complete answer is found, and I am starting to think that there is only one certain thing that I can say I am.
I am a foreigner. This is the reality of it. Wherever I go there are too many qualities of me that are foreign, and those get noticed the most by those around me. In Korea, I am an American, who cannot eat raw fish and whose English is too fast to be understood, and in America, I am always the international student, the one who does well in math seemingly without trying, who has the different colored passport.
The person in front of me in the line moves inches forward. It saddens me a bit that I exist without a true home, without a true national identity which so many take pride in. It is my feeling that I will never be completely accepted by either societies, and no matter how much I cheer along at soccer games involving the Korean national team, or argue about the chances for the Red Sox this year with my fellow students, I will always be an outsider, a foreigner whose home is presumably far away. And so, I will have to live with this gap in me, the lack of any society that I can truly call home.
Or will I? The truth of the matter is, I really am a foreigner in both societies. However, it strikes me that this is not all that I am. I am a son, a brother and a student. I am a part of a team, part of a class, a friend to many. These relationships that I form will forever leave me connected to both worlds in a way that surely makes me significant. I take some comfort in this fact, but there is something in this explanation that is lacking, something that makes me feel as if I have forgotten something important.
Then I remember. It is the most important of facts, one that when I remember I breathe a sigh of relief, and gives me a sense of peace.
I am myself. I am all of my feats and failures. I am all of my annoying habits and odd idiosyncrasies and personal preferences. I am all that is right and wrong with me. I am like shapeless water, shifting constantly, yet not in a way that matters. The core of me remains the same, and in this fact, I find serenity.
Jesung Lee is a sophomore at Groton School, in Massachusetts, USA.