As life goes on, one can learn about an important life lesson on an ethical value by experiencing different situations. I have experienced something valuable that not so many people have experienced in their lives ; Studying abroad. I had a priceless opportunity to get exposed to many different beneficial aspects such as learning a new culture in a different environment, a new language, and having friends from all over the world, which eventually became my assets. From the experiences, I learned a massive lesson on some of the ethical values. However, there was one major principle which struck my mind. The ethical principle that I value the most is to express myself to others as much as you can. We are not living in the world in which one throws a hint and expects others to catch it. The world has changed. We have to open our mouth and say what we really want in order to express ourselves. There are the following two major events in my life that shaped the understanding of the principle.
As I have mentioned, I studied abroad and am still continuing to study abroad. In the beginning of 2010, my family moved to a small island country in Southeast Asia called Singapore. Moving to Singapore was a huge change in my life. The first few months were fantastic as I travelled around the country, and tried exotic food with a great overwhelming enthusiasm. When I settled down after a few months, I started to have some nostalgic reminiscences of my country. I started to miss my family members, including the relatives, and friends. Back in 2010, we lacked a technology that we have today such as smartphones with applications that connect people all around the world together. I did not own a smartphone back then, and there was no way of reaching the news of my friends in Seoul but sending out an E-mail. This was the time when I started to realize the ethical principle of communicating or expressing myself to others as much as I could. I sent and received some E-mails in the first two months, but the frequency decreased and eventually we barely talked and heard the news each other. My cousins and grandparents were especially harder to reach as they were not sure how to use the technology. My cousins were young to have E-mail accounts and my grandparents were not aware of the concept of E-mail. Using my parents phone, I reached out to those family members once in 4 or 5 months. Since then, I made a resolution to express myself.
In 2014, the period when smartphones were mass-produced, a friend of mine named Min Jun who I met in Singapore had to leave back to Korea due to his family decision. He decided to finish the rest of the high school courses in Korea. I finally had an iPhone to communicate to Min Jun using a Face-time application. Aware of the ethical value that I slowly learned, we talked about how life had been. Whenever I visited Seoul, we hung out and talked about life. In 2015, Min Jun enrolled in an university in Seoul. As he was studying, he wanted to gain some earnings. However, the path that he chose to make money did not match to my expectation. He wanted to work at the club for table reservation, escort, and security or so-called ‘bouncer’. I was fully aware of the fact that people working at the club were not the best people to have around. I had conversations with Min Jun several times about his decisions that there were many clean ways to gain his earnings. In spite of my wishes, Min Jun was extremely stubborn to walk his path. I strongly disagreed from his decision, and we had a huge argument that made me very upset. Since this incident, I was so upset that I stopped talking to Min Jun for a while. After a few months to a year, I started to think about Min Jun and I felt uncomfortable how I casually continued to move on even though he was like a brother to me. Thinking that I would talk to him or meet him at one point, I received a phone call from my friend in the summer of 2017. I could not believe what my friend told me. “Did you hear the news? Min Jun is not here in this world anymore. He had an accident in which he fell to death”, my friend said. A short phone call less than a minute was enough to make me burst into tears. When I attended his funeral service, I learned from his younger brother that Min Jun was always proud of me, and missed the times we had together in Singapore. The brother of Min Jun even told me that he was so proud of me that he talked to his people around that I got accepted to Pennsylvania State University. Strongly aware of what I should have done with my ethical principle I learned, I could not follow what I promised to do. Even though I had a chance to talk to him, express myself that I felt sorry for my attitudes, and sorry for not reaching out to him for a while, I did not talk to him and now I am not able to talk to him anymore. The passing of Min Jun had a huge impact to enforce my believes ; Express myself more when possible.
In 2015, I moved to the United States for my university after living in Singapore for 5 years. Moving to America was very different from moving to Singapore as I had the whole family in Singapore whereas I had to live alone in an individual housing in America. I had a lot of spare and personal time in the dorm where I used to live for the first two years. I tried to ‘Face-time’ my parents as much as I could in my free time, and asked them if everything was okay. Across the hallway, I met a friend, Hyung Woo, who also came from Korea to study in Penn State. Since we were the freshmen who just enrolled to the school, we relied on each other, helped each other out, made food and studied together. He was just like a family member living together in the same building. We continued to help each other out until he decided to take a break from school after the first semester of Sophomore year. He told me that there were several factors that made him take a gap year and I respected his decision. As I made a big resolution to keep in touch with people around me, Hyung Woo and I tried to ‘Face-time’ as much as we could.
When I became a Junior, I was taking lots of credits for the semester and I ran out of spare time to talk to my friends and family in depth, which means the reduced time. Even with the reduced available time, I tried to reach out to Hyung Woo and my parents but I did not tell him and my parents how much I appreciated they have sacrificed for me for the past year and a half. Hyung Woo’s reply to my message stopped in October and I was convinced that he would talk to me back soon. However, there was no reply, or face time call anymore. For the winter break of 2017, I flew back to Korea to spend some time with my family but I never expected a surprising news waiting for me that Hyung Woo got hospitalized due to an acute leukemia. Totally shocked by the news, I wanted to visit him at the hospital, but he did not want me to visit him as he did not want to show his weak side. He even told me that it was just an ‘acute’ leukemia that he can recover soon and made a promise to see me outside the hospital. Three days before my flight back to the United States, I was scrolling down the Facebook page and I found a status from Hyung Woo. It turned out that the status was written by Hyung Woo’s friend, and Hyung Woo unfortunately did not overcome the battle with leukemia. At that moment, I felt so regretful how I did not get to say a word of appreciation to Hyung Woo in the past and I had to let him go without expressing my gratitude to him. I was able to reach him on Facebook just the days before his passing. I found out that his mother had passed away 3 days before his passing, which affected his health critically, and eventually took him away. Flying back to the United States with a heavy heart, I faced another news that broke my heart. My mother got hospitalized due to an acute appendicitis. Lost in a very deep thought, I regretted over and over how I did not show my thankfulness and love towards my friends and family. Fortunately, my mother is now out of hospital, and she is gradually recovering.
With an expensive life lesson that took away two of my friends’ lives in the past 6 months and the recent news of my mother, I fully show my appreciation towards the people around me even more, like today is the last day for me too. I was shy to tell my parents that I love them for a while to be truthful. After these incidents, I have been expressing my love and appreciation towards the people around me, which gradually lightens the mood.