Bittersweet: the feeling of longing for my birth country
In the past few weeks, my family and I were able to go back to my birth country, South Korea, for an extended vacation. It’s been around four years since we had gone last, mostly due to the pandemic, and we were all anxiously waiting for our return. For me, South Korea has always been a place of longing. What if our family had not immigrated? What would it feel like to have our relatives, our home base, our origin be in the same place that we call home now? What if I knew the Korean language better, so that I could connect better with my grandparents or cousins? It’s always these kind of questions that go through my head on the flight over. The mix of joy to return to a place of origin with the guilt of leaving, despite me not having had a choice in that, is always the bittersweet feeling that comes with separation. I’m sure many of you have experienced this feeling, whether you moved away from a childhood home or are also an immigrant like I am.
But this time around, compared to the trips to Korea I have had in the past, I felt as though my feelings of longing should just stay … as feelings of longing. What I mean by this is, my foundational love for my country of origin is majorly due to my separation from it. When I actually arrive in Korea, I realize that the places I have idealized in my head are just the roads, trees, parks found anywhere else in the country. I found more discomfort in seeing homogenous faces of Korean people rather than the diverse faces of the US. The overwhelming joy of seeing my relatives only comes from the pain of being away from them for so long. I think about my friends who have relatives live close to them complaining about seeing their relatives too often - and I am, in some ways, grateful that I only experience longing towards mine. Maybe you could coin this feeling as romanticization, but the feeling is a little deeper than that. For me, it’s the fundamental want for this place to feel like somewhere I belong. In the US, it’s so easy for me to feel like an outsider, as an Asian American. But in Korea, I realized that I feel much the same - an outsider, an Asian that has become too American.
“The longing for such an Eden is the Eden itself.”
I know many of you have also felt this way. The feeling of longing for a place that is your Eden, the place that will magically solve all of your problems, insecurities, hopes - I feel this whenever I wish that I had stayed in Korea at least a little bit longer before immigrating, thinking that I would speak better Korean than I do right now. Maybe then, I would be able to speak with my grandma better, to understand her. But without this sadness of not being able to fully communicate, I would not have the constant urge to try so hard to speak whenever I am with her. I would not spend the time on Google translate to be intentional with my words whenever we speak. The place of Eden that I long for is not necessarily the place of Korea but the consistent forging of connections that I make with the people there. The longing for such an Eden is the Eden itself. Bible words aside, I understand more now that my feelings of not-belonging were because of my feelings of longing for a place that I was separated from, a place that I alluded to be somewhere I could’ve led a different, maybe better life. But as someone who already has a blessed and privileged life due to the hard work of my immigrant parents, it seems silly to think that a country I have spent only a few years in would be the answer to an identity crisis (or other crises).
If you have a place that you long for, maybe it’s OK to keep those feelings of longing. I don’t mean feelings of longing like “Oh, I’d love to live in California - the beaches and weather there are amazing!”. I mean longing that borderlines the feeling of heartache - this feeling that is our own little fantasy, our own “what if” that drives us to almost crazy. Once we realize that this fantasy is just a fantasy, becoming free of its captive idealizations, we can appreciate the moments in our everyday lives that have already given us fantasy in reality. For me, this is appreciating having such strong ties to the family I have in the US. It’s appreciating my community’s roads, trees, parks. It’s appreciating my attempts to be connected to Korea, whether it’s continually relearning Korean culture or reaching out to relatives, rather than just feeling guilty for not being in Korea itself. Longing has given me the gift of imagination and gratitude.
What are the places you long for?
