Cure your slavery with patience
and prayers
or so I was told
Cure your oppression and memory with sleep
as for me
I sat under the high, thorny trees
until they flowered
I wanted to cover today a poem that explicitly had a contrasting view with that of my prior. As stated clearly from the title, "Cure Your Slavery with Patience", the virtue of patience is continuously highlighted throughout the entire poem, a virtue which I had not felt much significance of. As a Korean highschool student, everything had been about effiency. How to use each second of every minute to its fullest; Wasting time was considered the biggest vice. Naturally, such environment fostered diligence within me that I had not known existed, but I became overly obsessed with the pressure of being efficient and constantly pushing myself. My worst fear was falling behind in this hectic competition. Thus for me, patience was of no importance. No value. What could I do with patience? Was there anything it offered me?
But from the first line of this poem, "cure your slavery with patience", the strong words of "cure" and "slavery" evoked a sense of doubt within me that I had never come to realize of. "Slavery" in this poem seemed to mean a sense of answer we felt like we had for ourselves but was actually imprisioning in the idea of - for me, the insatiable craving for efficiency. But with patience, zooming out of the very narrow, present view of our life and contemplating with a broad perspective, our matters are no longer about how many tasks to finish and attempting not to fall behind, but rather about what it is that we greatly aspire to achieve with the one life given to us. In a sense we are indeed restraining ourselves, but simultaneouly, liberating ourselves. Patience offers us a strength no effiency can ever offer: the strength to take full control of our lives and live by the motivation of passion not fear.
