Food for thought...Remnants of High School Dreams til Now

This was the prelude for the 2001 edition of my high school's literary magazine, Synergy, written by Ben Paley:

Familia

Come, brother. Come, sister. This year we cekebrate parts of a whole. We are all members, in our own way, of some type of family, be it through blood, through understanding, or through classification. Here, we present to you a new family, a family of works which has all the intricate complexities of any family: the protective older brother, the spinster cousin, the parent who watches over the rest, the disgruntled child who sits quietly in the corner. All the poignancy, the potential for agreement and disagreement, for love and for hate, exists within this family we have created. But, as in any family, each piece has its place, fulfills its role. Only now, the family is anxious. An aura of solicitude hangs over them for a member who has died, or rather, has not yet been born. You, reader, are the member who is absent. It is the pregnancy with the idea of you that sustains this book. So, more than just reading, we invite you to participate: to weep at the sorrow of a widowed aunt, to be angered by a father, to find solace in the wise words of a grandparent, to become a part of this family, for, as parts of a whole, "we are here to split the life" (Oliver 44).

And here I have come to "split the life". To find myself as a part of this whole that we call life. It's been a long hard road and there's probably more rough terrain ahead, but at least I know I can steady my footprint in the ground that has already been walked on by many.

I have been trying so hard to find my place in this world as an individual, but I think that to start out with the individual and focus so much on it is to go crazy. After a while you begin to feel as if you're alone, and the world around you is just a back alley that you tend to wander, pacing in and out of the shadows. Instead, let me think of myself as a part of a whole, a tender piece of fruit that leads to the seed below to help encourage growth.

But what am I part of? My group of friends be them: Korean adoptees, Korean Americans, Asian Americans, close friends, Biology majors, family. In a way, I am a part of them all honestly, just as much as they are a part of me.