Balance Between Work and Rest

 In the Russian novel by Dostoevsky, the Karamazov Brothers the second son of Fedor is Ivan an atheist, the writer of the Peace Column of the Catholic Peace Weekly brings to the readers' attention the words this cold reasoning, proud individual, confides to his brother Alyosha.
 
"I want to live. I want to live even though it's against my logic. Even though I do not believe in the order of things— in the spring, the sticky leaves that sprout are precious, the blue sky is precious, and sometimes without any reason, people are seen by me as precious."

When we finish this pilgrimage on earth what will we consider the most valuable? It is hard to assert anything because life is the first experience for all of us. However, it seems that it is not riches, honor, and power that we struggle to achieve like swarms of insects flying towards the light on a  summer night.

I have never seen anyone who was dying ever lament on not making more money or for not receiving sufficient honors. But rather missing the small moments of everyday life with the family, a pleasant trip, spending time with friends. Even Ivan, with his intellectual vanity, says that a person who can see the leaves and the sky and the preciousness of life doesn't want to die.

However, nowadays people are buried in work not able to see what is precious. It's not working to live, but living to work; one forgets what comes first. The meaning of life is nothing more than a hollow philosophy to people who spend their lives dying in the work. Labor is not a blessing but a curse. Such workaholics do not enjoy the freedom of a holiday.  Freedom is just an uncomfortable waste.

Ivan's confession tells what is most valuable in life. Falling leaves, bright blue sky, and good people can not be measured numerically. These precious things are not included in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross National Product). Happiness in soaking a watermelon in the valley water, happiness to hear a child's chattering, the warm gaze of a loved one, and enjoyment of play are not captured with words.

The summer vacation season has begun. Life is difficult we hear often but at no time throughout human history do we have the abundance that we now experience. So we can take a break from work. We are invited to taste the simple pleasures of life that come to us daily without a price tag. Persons who discover these joys in life have no anxious worries that keep them from sleep or become frustrated in life.
 
How about asking 'Wisdom on how to count' (Psalm 90,12)."Teach us to count how few days we have and so gain wisdom of the heart." What will I miss on the day when the expiration date for my life approaches? With this wisdom, the happiness we taste during the holidays will be doubled.

Ozone and Fine Dust Problem in Korea

The warnings about health seem to be increasing.  Water, air, food all the natural gifts have become tainted with pollutants known and unknown. A member of the Bishops' Committee on the environment writes in the Catholic Peace Weekly on the Ozone problem we face.
 
The past few days have been like a picture card with the beautiful blue sky and white clouds introducing us to a beautiful sunset. But the cell phone sent us a warning message: be careful about your health—the sun is hot and temperature high—drink plenty of water and avoid outdoor activities.
 
Ozone (O3) which occurs mainly from late spring to early autumn is harmful to health, along with fine dust and heat. How much do we know about ozone?

Naturally occurring ozone functions like a net that blocks the sun's ultraviolet rays so that life on Earth is possible. On the other hand, there is ozone that is a by-product of air pollution, and this ozone is harmful to the human body. Harmful ozone generated by industrialization is not produced directly by the combustion of fossil fuels. Nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds generated during combustion are generated by strong sunlight reacting with ultraviolet rays. The toxic concentration increases between late spring and early autumn.

Ozone is a substance that combines with air pollution and fine dust increasing the mortality rate. The concentration of ozone has been steadily increasing, and the ozone warning has also increased more than twice from 241 times in 2016 to 489 times in 2018.

The ozone warning is issued when the average ozone concentration is over a certain standard for 1 hour. If this condition persists for 3 ~ 4 hours, you will feel cough, eye irritation, and breathing symptoms. If it lasts for about 2 weeks, headache, shortness of breath, visual impairment, and respiratory disease are aggravated, resulting in asthma and chronic lung disease. Although ozone is known to affect only the lungs, one doctor has reported that ozone affects blood sugar, insulin, and insulin resistance and hurts diabetics.

Also, the inflammation caused by ozone affects not only the inflammation of various organs but also the neurotransmitter, which is also associated with the development of depression; the health effect is less than fine dust.

The problem is that ozone is not well known and only a few systematic studies on the origin, generation, inflow, and extermination have been made, and countermeasures are also insufficient.

The government considers ozone to be a serious problem along with fine dust, and the need to study it fully and prepare countermeasures. The standards for forecasting also need maintenance.

We need to know about ozone so we can call for measures and policies. We can reduce ozone generation when efforts are made to practice eco-life and reduce the production of fine dust.

Paris Foreign Missions and Young People

A diocesan priest waiting to go to Africa on a mission assignment writes about his experience living with over a hundred priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. He writes about his stay at the Society House in France in the recent Kyeongyang magazine. In the past, he was involved working with the young.

Walking around the property he noticed the many memories of the young bishops and priests who over 170-180 years ago came to Korea to die. They came to a small country in the Far East in their 20 and 30s in the springtime of their lives to help build the Christian community among Koreans. He fixes his hands in prayer and gratitude. Many of them died a martyrs' death.

Not too long ago he ate his meals with over 30 young people who from early morning to late at night were learning about life on the missions, giving him great joy. They were filled with enthusiasm. He was curious about their presence and asked one of the priests. They were there from all over France to learn and share.

The Society began a program about 15 years ago for the youth of France following the mission objectives of the society from the beginning. They have about 150 selected for the program, conducted 4 times during the year. They are sent to Madagascar and the countries of Asia to work with their priests for 3 months to 2 years.

He met a young woman who was just recently married and was attending the mission school. She and her husband will be going to the Philippines for 2 years. He was under the impression that the Church in France was in decline this news gave him a new way of seeing the French Church.

This movement within the society naturally helps to discover vocations to the religious life. Even now there are those at a young age working on a mission who go on to become seminarians and missioners. But the first objective of the school is not the development of vocations but to form missioners to work in different countries with their members. During the program, they give the volunteers an understanding of vocation to many different ways of life. 

He would like to see this also develop within the Korean church. What the Church has been trying to do in recent meetings with representatives from the different countries, the Paris Foreign Missions has been doing for some time.

The young people will always be an important element within the church. Recently Pope Francis in a talk to the young people of a diocese in France recommended three values he hopes they will pursue.

First, he called on them to always be “builders of bridges between people, seeking to advance a culture of encounter and dialogue, to contribute to the coming of an authentic human fraternity.”

Secondly, caring for the smallest and poorest amongst us, the Pope told them, “you can light stars in the night for the many who are tried in various ways”.

Thirdly, "God takes us to where humanity is most wounded, where men and women, beneath the appearance of a shallow conformity, continues to seek an answer to the question of life's meaning." Rejoice and Be Glad Apostolic EXhortation #135.

Is a Ruined Life a Possibility?

 "This life is ruined." The present craze of many of the young people: I don't have a good head, not pretty or handsome, don't have parents with lots of money or status in society... The world is tightly centered around vested interests, no dreams for the future. My life is ruined. So begins an article in the Catholic Times by a lawyer.
 
Is there any guarantee that the next life will be any better? The word 'next life' has its many meanings. This person that I am, this me, depends on my parents' genes and everything is decided on their looks and abilities. Even if there is a next time, I will be born with genes of different parents. I will be a different person.

It is only this one life for us. So even if you think you are not going to have an easy time and live well in this life, don't lift your hands in surrender but make the most of what you have been given, don't say you have been ruined but work to change the odds.

The writer has given much thought to the lives that people have lived. His father came alone to the South at the time of the Korean War. He did not earn big money nor did he have a name in society. But every morning, in his later years he would shine his son's shoes and left the son with some bottles of  'soju' that he was not able to drink. When I was a child, the flower garden that he cultivated with his father went along with him even though he moved a few times.

During the Korean War, a lieutenant in the so-called North Korea's  Army was imprisoned by South Korea for 36 years refusing to give up his beliefs.  After he had finished his prison term he went to an island in the South and hanged himself on a pine tree. "I am leaving the world on November 24, 1990, at 4:10 am. I have made countless mistakes hurting my party and my country, and I have to make amends for my life. I have tried to be sincere in life but left nothing but a blurry trace." We in the South can see his position as wrong but he was a communist to the marrow and gave his life to bring about what he believed was a just society. We can't say he ruined his life for he was true to himself and his beliefs for a better world.
 
We have the life of my friend from our school days. After he passed the government exams, he became a public prosecutor. Shortly after he was diagnosed with liver cancer from overwork and died.  My friend before he died was quoted as saying: "I didn't know what life had in store for me when I became a prosecutor if I had the opportunity to live my life over again, I would be a lawyer defending the weak and the poor in need."

A few years ago, a grandmother in her old age came from her nursing home to see the writer. Both parents and siblings held high positions both in the  South and North. She was able to earn a great deal of money from her business skills. She became the second wife of a college professor and raised her husband's children from the previous wife for 50 years. But now the children are asking for all her money. It developed into a great sadness. She gave all her money to the unification movement of the North and South which was her dream from an early age.  As a woman, her life was not happy but neither was it ruined.
 
Karl Rahner says that the resurrection of Jesus does not mean that a person's soul and body will be raised again with this world's history, but that your "personality and interests" in pursuing the Kingdom of God will be developed and see fruition in the resurrected life. We should not just eat well and live well in this life, but we must consider what are our interests in this life and what we are doing to pursue the kingdom of God as a follower of Jesus. With this way of looking at life, it will never be a ruined life.

Peaceful Coexistence in the World Village

In the globalization era, we live in a global village. The internet and social media are bringing us closer than ever before but the unstable international situation and the trade wars are establishing barriers between countries. In the meantime the meeting of the South and North and the US president in Panmunjom gives us hope for peace on the Korean Peninsula and the world. So begins the article in the Eyes of the Believer column of the Catholic Weekly.
 
Since the colonial struggle' and the 'Cold War'  in the 20th century, society is undergoing tremendous changes with fierce resistance of people to obstacles against the sovereign independence of the nation. Instead of 'political and military domination', which seeks to take the land of another nation and rule it directly, as the Japanese imperialism made Korea their colony, it now takes the initiative in 'economic and strategic hegemony'. For example, the trade war between Trump and Beijing, China's economic sanctions against the missile deployment on the Korean peninsula, and the economic retaliation against Japan, all reveal complicated hegemony conflicts in political, military, diplomatic and economic relations.

On the other hand, today's neoliberal economic systems led by WTO (International Trade Organization), IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank have been promoting FTA (Free Trade Agreement). In particular, when foreign reserves are scarce and the country becomes bankrupt, the rescue has forced the domestic market to open up to foreign investors and even enforced surveillance.
 
With Korea, the IMF asked for more than 100 requirements for a large-scale restructuring of the labor market. Korea was incorporated into the international (financial) market, the discrimination clause for growth and employment-related to large companies was strengthened to attract foreign capital.

The common national strategy to cope with the rapid globalization in the global village seems to be the proliferation of populism and support for transnational corporations. Politicians in the grip of populism tend to attract by their extreme expressions the  'popularity' and 'approval' of their fans to win elections. Politicians who ignore the values of the common good and cultivate their positions are 'false agitators' who are not interested in the citizens. Prime Minister Abe, who is ahead in the general election, his strategy to boost the approval rate is to stimulate the right-wing nationalism. In Korea, politicians who are opposed to social integration and the common good are criticized by healthy citizens.

Second, individual nations gain enormous lobbying and political backing from their transnational corporations and support companies that have grown up like mushrooms after the rain.  Also, large companies in Korea have been striving for short-term profits by sending certain functions outside the company instead of handling them in house. More and more companies have long neglected long-term investment in technology.

In the course of globalization, competition and peace among nations and peoples, conflicts and cooperation, exclusion and inclusion are all mixed;  we have to study the word  'peace' to coexist. The Second Vatican Council proclaims the essence of peace as follows: "Peace is not merely the absence of war. Nor can it be reduced solely to the maintenance of a balance of power between enemies. Nor is it brought about by dictatorship. Instead, it is rightly and appropriately called 'an enterprise of justice'.  Peace results from the harmony build into human society by its divine Founder, and actualized by men as they thirst after ever greater justice." (Pastoral Constitution, Article 78)

We must pursue peace with coexistence beyond the logic of competition and power!  Peace does not justify unilateral domination, factions, bullying business practices, and does not exclude the poor and the weak, coexistence of mankind and the development of all peoples. It is a way of pilgrimage pursuing the "common good" and just relationships.

Expectations Turning Into Betrayal

In the column 'Learning by Living in the Peace Weekly, a religious sister recalls a man, without a wife, who was raising his son alone. He was a good obedient son, graduated from college, had a good job; the father was proud of his son and proud of himself because of his son. Everything seemed to be going along smoothly.
 
One day, however, the father appeared as if the world had collapsed. His son came home late, drunk, wobbled around and the father without thought expressed anger at the son's behavior. His son, in turn, looking directly at the father: "What have you done for me that justifies your anger" screamed the son. "Tell me?"
 
The father was shocked by the gleam in his son's eyes, his anger, he was out of breath, his whole body seemed paralyzed. "It seems that the years I have spent raising you have all disappeared into the darkness. How did I raise you?" Shaking, he wondered whether this was a betrayal. All the love and trust that was once there all in a moment, disappeared. 
 
The words of Neil Postman came to mind. "When  expectations are too clear and vivid they are the only things seen. Nothing else is on the horizon." The father in this situation was confined by his expectations. They were reflected back to him from the mirror into which he continually looked.
 
Betrayal is an emotion that can only be felt by a loved one. When the person I believed in turns against me in gossip, when siblings fight over property given by parents at death, when a lover turns against the one loved for another, this we see as a betrayal.
 
Expectations for the son turns into a betrayal moment. "What did the father ever do for me?" In these words, the father's world fell apart. Fortunately, the father was able to open his heart and talked with his son.

His son missed his mother. He endured all the troubles for his father who raised him. When he was a child, he remembered the mothers of his friends waiting at the gate of the school, and running to the arms of their mothers. Or when he saw mothers walking in the streets with their sons he had to swallow tears for there was no way to suppress his memories of long ago.

In the end, longing became sorrow, anger, and returned as a grudge against his father. The son may have wanted to ask about his responsibilities: Why was he born? The repression and the resentment that piled up poured out due to the liquor.
 
The father found it difficult to understand the son with his head but in his heart, he realized that it was not a head problem but one of the heart. It may take time for the grudge and suffering of the son to go down to his father's heart. He knew, however, the day would come when his expectations would retreat to the background.

Often heard is keep your expectations low and be an overachiever. There is truth in this saying but better still is to hope even when our expectations are not realized for hope is a desire in a future good difficult to attain that is not possessed but wanted and for a Christian trust in God.

Cool Trend In Shopping

A few years back we began hearing the phrase 'Dangjin Jam' (use up, spend) meaning the fun that comes from shopping and wasting money on small things. This seems to be a consumer trend. According to a survey of workers, 70 percent of respondents said they enjoyed doing just that. A professor in the field of consumer science in the Peace Weekly gives the readers some ideas on the topic.
 
Areas where the money is spent are clothing, shoes, cosmetics, restaurants, entertainment, and liquor. Consumption of  'Dangjin' is mainly focused on items that are not expensive, and since it helps to relieve stress, becomes a compensating gift to oneself, many people fall into the habit without guilt.

This trend relieves the stress of the unemployed and the young workers attempting to solve their many stresses. This trend spread rapidly because people who do not have the finances to buy what they want can shop at Daiso, (Japanese discount store) and similar stores forgetting the drudgery of daily life.
 
However, this small rebellion by small people against society began to change the values of consumption. If consumers are more or less focused on getting fun through shopping, chances are they will become addicted to shopping. Consumers gain two important psychological rewards: respect from others and perceived control over spending. Consumers who do not have a way to satisfy it elsewhere are likely to be attracted to 'Dangjin Jam'.
 
Consumers regardless of the size of their wallets, have an absolute position in the market today, and suppliers and salespeople reward consumers for their purchases and show appreciation and respect. Also, by choosing what to buy in a market with many alternatives, consumers have a sense of perceived control over their actions difficult to get elsewhere.

Besides the danger of addiction, we have other problems that may arise from shopping. The first is the possibility of excessive shopping. 'Many a little makes a mickle' this is not limited to saving. The monthly consumption of those who indulge in 'Dangjin Jam' spend a little over 200 dollars a month.
 
Secondly, it's another stress. Fortunately, 42.3% of the workers say it improves their feelings, but 40.3% answered the stress recurred immediately. The effect of stress relief through shopping is very temporary. On the other hand, the credit card statement for 'Dangjin Jam' is another long-lasting source of stress.

The third problem is the distortion of consumption values. It is undeniable that shopping expresses self and brings emotional satisfaction. However, there are other ways to grow, enjoy emotional abundance, develop oneself—through good human relationships, and find happiness doing meaningful work for society.
 
We should be concerned with this trend towards 'Dangjin Jam' which is spreading in the market. According to the statistics, 40% of respondents in their 50s  enjoy 'Dangjin', it's no longer the problem of young people.