By Isaiah
“It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” This oft-quoted saying pretty much sums up what I, and many others, thought a gap year would be about. I’m Isaiah/Heesung, and this is the story of how three months of living in Seoul, South Korea completely shattered this preconception.
I’m spending my gap year in Seoul to study Korean. Though I grew up surrounded by Korean culture, I never managed to get a good grasp of the language since we spoke English at home (I blame my mother for this; though she was born in Korea, she was a professional Korean-English translator and never needed to switch off her very-not-broken English). Because of this, I always felt like my identity was disconnected: If I’m a Korean, why can’t I speak Korean? So when the opportunity arose to spend nine months in Korea, I took it in a heartbeat. My goal was simple: learn Korean to become the Korean I was always truly meant to be, of course.
But when I first arrived in Korea, it wasn’t my Korean identity that was being reshaped: it was my American one.
To my surprise, my Korean language classmates were from all over the globe: just as an example, the first three people I met were from Belgium, France, and China. My classmates were world travelers. Dubai? Last summer. Japan? Next week. South America? A 6-month volunteering trip just a year ago. And yet, they seemed grounded, knowing where they came from. When we would talk in Korean about anything from the weather to culture to public transportation systems, they would immediately have an answer. “In my country,” they would begin, “it’s like this.” But when I was asked the same questions, I was constantly confused: Should I talk about my hometown, Los Angeles? Or should I talk about Boston, or maybe New York (where they have trains)? How can I talk about the broader United States when each part is so different?
They seem to know what it means to be Mongolian or Vietnamese, but what does it even mean to be American?
“American means nothing,” my Chilean friend joked. “You people from the United States call yourselves Americans, but Chile is also in America, no? South America? Does that not make me an American too?” Great, I laughed to myself, now even the word “American” itself has lost its meaning. What am I to do now?
As “Americans,” we don’t really have one cohesive cultural identity. The United States has often been described as a cultural “melting pot” (whether that analogy is true or not is the topic of another research paper), being home to a diverse range of peoples, cultures, religions, backgrounds, and languages. And that’s not to mention that America is geographically massive, spanning from “sea to shining sea,” leading to a host of regional differences (“What do you mean, ‘It’s just past the Dunkin’?”). We can’t even all agree on the things that “bind all Americans together,” like freedom, capitalism, or democracy.
But maybe, just maybe, that’s what being American means: being a part of the great big mess at the dining table. Maybe being American means that we are all different, and will be all different, but we still need to work with each other and try to understand each other, at least just a little. Maybe being American is not about where we were born, but rather, the friends we make along the way.
That’s right. If I’m opening with a cliche, I’m definitely closing with one.
It turned out that the start of my gap year was not about the journey, and not about the destination, but rather, the origin: where I was coming from. I thought I would spend my time learning what it meant to be Korean, but instead, I ended up reflecting on what it meant to be American.
“American means nothing” may seem like a bleak statement at first, but it’s totally different from “Being American doesn’t mean anything.” For there is meaning in the nothingness: you need the space created by nothingness in order to have room to create good and beautiful things. Our diversity makes room for collaboration and innovation. After three months of living in Korea, this is what I think it means to be American: to embrace our differences so that together, we can create a place in which everyone thrives.
