The Benefits of Loving a Typhoon

Last year Suhee and I were invited to the Suncheon Visual Media Center in Korea for a talk. During the talk, one audience member told us an amazingly beautiful story about a life-changing encounter with a typhoon. After the talk, Suhee and I, so impressed by the meaningful encounter, worked on a translation of that story.

Today I share that translation with you...

One of the fabulous small rivers running through Suncheon, Korea, so lush Willows and all sorts of plant and animal life. (Image CC BY-SA Suhee Kang)

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I have read many books on ecology and none of them touched me deeply. However, when I read your book < Here We are, Without Anxiety or Competition >, I became very emotional. Actually, I cried a lot. Then I asked myself, what is it about this book that makes me cry?

I grew up in the city and somehow, in reading the stories, I felt like there was something I had been missing in my life up to that point. You could say that, although I lived on earth, I was not really seeing the earth or being a part of earth.

But then, I remembered when I was a kid. It was different. I played in the nature a lot. One day, I went outside during a typhoon. I felt the wind and the rain strongly on my body. It was an amazing feeling.

Over time though, that attitude and connection to the earth went away. Being an adult, you are not supposed to do that. The news is constantly telling us things that make us afraid of nature and of each other.

Well, recently I was watching the news about the coming typhoon, and I realized that what the people on the screen were saying did not align with the version of reality I remembered from my childhood. I started to doubt what they said. Instead I put more trust in what I remembered from when I was young. So as the newscasters were proclaiming how ‘devastating’ the ‘torrential rain’ and ‘havoc wrecking winds’ were, I turned off the TV. I went outside. I let the rains drench me. With some deep feeling in my heart, I kindly said hello to the typhoon as it pressed into my body. Then, in an instant, the fear that had previously gripped me had disappeared.

I think on this day I realized that the earth needs typhoons just as much as it needs calm sunny days. With the winds blowing my hair and the rains pelting down on my skin, I found the answer to why I had cried before. In this was also the answer for how to make my life.

The answer for me was that, wherever I live in this world, I should do my best to live in relation to the earth, and I should also do it with love. I think the world needs more love in our hearts when we view the world. Move love for nature, more love for each other.

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Perhaps standing in the middle of a typhoon is not your jam, but I feel like all of us can work to get more information about the world from interactions with the world itself, rather than only from the mouths and scripts of others.

Thanks for reading! As always, I am extremely thankful that you all are here. If you know of others who might enjoy The Possible City, please share it with them. If you are already doing that, the next best thing to help keep this ship sailing, is to join the secret club of paid subscribers. It is a great club, full of wonderful people. No matter what, thanks to all of you, for whatever actions you are taking in your own life and work.

See you next time.