In Class Writing -Reflective Essay on "Spring"

     It has long been a dream of mine to travel alone in a "new world" - a world where I have never been to, where I do not have any acquaintance, where I am not at all familiar with the culture, and where I would feel totally isolated and alienated. I always became excited as I imagined meeting with some unknown indigenous tribes and trying my best to converse with them and assimilate to their way of living. The fascination of the dream mainly came from two sources; first, I wanted to be "unique" and have unique experience and second, I wanted to "feel the nature".
     During the last winter vacation, the desire has grown more intense; the only and major reason for the intensification was Walden, written by the famous American writer and theorist, Henry David Thoreau. It is a very well known episode that Thoreau isolated himself from the civilized world for 2 years in order to leave himself, his "existence" and "being", away from all the artificial things and learn the true value of nature.
     Before reading the masterpiece, my awareness toward nature was somewhat indifferent. Truly, I have read and heard a lot of literary works, sayings, and remarks about the value of nature - how peaceful, cozy, and motherly it is. Yet, for they never got into the deepest facet of nature and thus never reflected the truist aspect of it, they were just a trivial and repetitive words ; they never "came to my skin".
     As I flipped the pages of Walden, however, I felt that my heart was beating with excitement, my hands were trembling with astonishment, and my hair was getting sweaty with the fabulous and evident insight of the author. Walden combines both the philosophies of the Eastern thinkers and the Western thinkers; such ideas like Mencius' "Zhung-yong [중용]" - an idea that a wise man should closely observe and realize the value and fundamentals of nature and follow the order without trying to commit extreme conducts that will harm the harmony- are appropriately connected to the author's own experience in the nature; for the Mencius' philosophy, it is combined with the Thoreau's experience with some farmer who had failed to successfully train a dog -because he, foolishly, thought that because dogs run faster than people, dogs could reach everywhere within several hours; becuase he, stupidly, thought that because dogs have more sensitive olfactory senses than people, dogs could smell and distinguish everything.
     Sequence of such evident connection and proof of all the trivial texts I have learned with real life episodes that he himself experienced have led me to revive my old dream and be dominated by the excitement and satisfaction that the experience would give me.

     Having watched the "Spring" part of the director Kim Ki-Duk's film, many of my classmates talked about how cute the boy is, how poor the fish and snake are, and how mysterious some of the scenes are. Throughout the movie, however, I thought of my dream; the dream that I had in my young elementary days, the dream that I reminded of as I was reading Walden, and the dream that I promised myself to achieve before I graduate college.
     The setting of the film rests in some temple in the middle of a lake that is surrounded by mountains and that has no sign of human exploitation. Two Buddist monks - one old and one very young - live in the temple. It was the very setting I dreamed of, except for the fact that there were not much people to contact with.
     Being able to live in the environment is such a fortunate gift for me. As seen in the film, any person would be completely liberated from the civilization and be able to cry at the death of a "small" fish and a "small" snake. These days, more and more I feel the arrogance of humankind - we assume that we are "big" compared to other creatures; we are NOT. I earnestly wish that I could, for one large fraction of my life, be able to find the life-yearned place and reflect myself, my feelings, and my life.

P.S. I wish I had more time..... ;(