Ep. 4 Blink and You're in a Coffin

The Mongolian night is dualistic. The air that was so dry and rough during the day sinks into a moist, cool calmness as soon as the sun sets.

The shores of Khuvsgul Lake, bathed in a soft moonlight. The lake was so massive that gentle waves lapped against the shore like the ocean. Swaaa— the sound of waves crashing and breaking against the pebbles. A chilly dawn with white frost settling outside the ger. I was walking side by side with Daeho along the night lake.

He was about to get married soon. And to the woman I had introduced him to, no less.

Throughout the trip, we had been getting slightly exhausted by the pickiness and complaints of the female companions in our group, bickering here and there, so I bluntly threw a question at him.

"Bro, are you sure she's the one? She seems a bit high-maintenance. Are you absolutely certain about this decision?"

Heart-to-Heart

The conversation that started like this naturally flowed into our parents' health and the suffocating homework of my own life.

'It's a waste of all the time and money spent to just give up on my Ph.D.' 'Should I do a postdoc? Or at least grab a business card from S Electronics?'
'Wouldn't investors only trust me if I have that kind of background?'
'If things go wrong, shouldn't I at least hold onto a safety net to fall back on?'

At the time, I was agonizing over these thoughts, unable to even confide in my parents. Standing right in the middle of feeling lost and wandering, I couldn't bring myself to say that I was leaving this field and didn't know where to go next.

That suffocating impatience and fear. The sheer terror of stepping off the predetermined path that the world praised as a guaranteed road to success. Meeting someone who had observed my personality and working style the longest in such a situation made all the words I had been bottling up burst out like a broken dam.

He quietly listened to my story. Then, his calm voice dropped over the sound of the lake's waves.

"Yung, you only live once. Blink, and you're in a coffin. It's a short, one-time life. Do what you want to do. Sure, I can't live like that anymore, but you go ahead and do it all for me, too."

'Blink and you're in a coffin', a chilling expression, and a clunky attempt at comfort. Yet, for me, who was hesitating at the crossroads of choice, it was a refreshing shock. Perhaps it hit harder because I was already feeling in my bones just how short life is, having recently experienced my grandfather's passing and my mother's rapidly deteriorating health.

Right... I should do what I want to do right now. But that's easier said than done.

In the brief silence, I do some quick mental math.

Even if I do a postdoc, it'll take at least 2 to 3 years. Going into S Electronics would take about the same time. By then, I'd be approaching 40. I already knew this path wasn't for me, so what would truly be left for me after doing all that? Is securing the gaze of others and a safety net really that important? Why am I so incredibly anxious?

Before the mental math even finishes, he throws his arm over my shoulder.

"I've been watching you up close. Whatever you do, you'll do great."

The suffocating sense of saving face and calculations that had been trapping me washed away in the cold night breeze of Khuvsgul Lake.

Faces

Most of the people I was traveling with had come here as an escape, taking advantage of a gap year between changing jobs or taking a leave of absence. When we first met, their faces were busy venting stress and cursing out their former bosses.

Suddenly, I look at their faces. Beneath the sprawling crater and the Mongolian sky that looked as if blue paint had been unspooled across it, the worries and complaints that were written all over their faces had already vanished.

I willingly volunteered as the photographer. People who had been subtly keeping their distance were now looking into the lens of my camera with bright smiles. The thought that 'suffering together really is the best team-building exercise' bounces around in my head along with the rattling of the UAZ Bukhanka tearing across the off-road.

Sharing Mongolian vodka under the night sky and listening to their innermost thoughts, the misunderstandings slowly faded. My perspective, which had become endlessly narrow from being locked inside a cramped graduate school lab, was slowly broadening as I gazed at the vast Mongolian steppes. My tolerance for others with different personalities was expanding.

'I thought there was a hidden agenda in their words, but they were just dealing with a lot of personal struggles inside.' 'What I felt was rudeness wasn't malice, but just a brutally honest personality.'

The final leg of the journey, at a restaurant in downtown Ulaanbaatar.

Clinking our glasses over pieces of horse meat, we let it all out. Because our return flights were all at different times, we had to send each person off to the airport one by one from here, and the regret of parting was surprisingly strong. We must have grown fond of each other along the way.

Epilogue: What Men Live By

Announcements echo in incomprehensible Mongolian, and Cyrillic letters I can't decipher float across the electronic boards. Just like that, the trip to Mongolia has come to an end.

I hadn't changed from who I was before leaving. If anything changed, it was just the extra expenses on my bank statement from Mongolia and an intense physical exhaustion lingering in my body. My ailing mother and my unresolved career issues were still waiting for me exactly as I had left them.

But as I adjust my backpack, I realize something. The anxiety that suffocates us usually stems from imaginary walls we build ourselves. The terror regarding my career path that wrapped around me before I left. The endless anxiety that made me want to pile safety net upon safety net just in case I failed. And even the arrogance of trying to perfectly control the realm of the divine, which is entirely out of my hands.

After realizing just how small of an existence I am in the face of this colossal mother nature, and how incredibly trivial—like mere specks of dust—the worries I was agonizing over truly are, I ironically became detached from all those things. Being detached finally allowed me to look at the situation objectively, and being objective allows me to focus solely on what I can do right here and now.

Now that I've started my own business, I think of Mongolia once again. A reality that is rougher and more unpredictable than the Mongolian steppes. A new off-road awaits me every single day. As I drive on, I will inevitably get lost, and the engine of the car I'm riding might just suddenly die in the middle of a vast, empty wasteland.

But so what if it does? Even that has its own romance. The mere fact that in this massive universe, during this short life, I have met the people currently by my side and we are enduring this road together. Even the trials that seem so massive right now, as if the sky is falling, will eventually remain as nothing more than a happening we can look back on and laugh about.

The Mongolian steppes asked. What do men live by. The smile that the Mongolian girl gave me blossoms on my own face.

(The End.)