Yesterday, I had ample time to ponder the meaning of my existence. Stuck on a bus for five hours with nothing to do but stare out the window, my thoughts drifted across the subtle dimensions of cranial space and time. The outcome of all this thinking was a gradual realization that despite my thoughts, progress was not being made. There were no conclusions I arrived at, no realizations, no monumental shift in perceptions or understandings. For all that thinking, I remained the same. But that in itself was a realization. In some things, I remain the same.

Sometimes the speed of life restricts me from actually being able to process the meaning of events taking place. I get caught up in the doing and forget about the meaning. It takes a complete break from my "normal" life in order for me to study it objectively, to contemplate its meaning. My weekend in Pohang did just that. For the first time since moving to Seoul, I was completely removed from my life and had the chance to look at it objectively. Strangely enough, I did not really enjoy what I saw.

Seoul is a representation for me of something I think everyone experiences at some point in their life (unless a person has never been bold enough to move to a new town, city, state or country). It's a world where I am a stranger among throngs of people, where every venture outside my front door brings me to a new place, and where every new place reinforces to me that I do not belong here...yet. Each new experience seems to be carved out of stone, a trophy of granite that sits in my trophy case of memories. No matter how many other memories clutter my trophy case, granite trophies form the base, the foundation where upon all the other memories rest. The stones remind me, I was once a stranger in the very places that now feel so familiar. In a detached sort of way I find it oddly curious to once again find myself at the bottom, placing stones of new experiences around my life in hopes that soon I'll have trophies of gold--of feeling like I belong--to place on top of them.