Searching for the truth about yourself
I was sobbing by the end of “How to be a Korean Woman,” a play written and performed by Sun Mee Chomet about her search for and reunion with her birth family in Korea.
I am neither Korean nor am I adopted. So why the tears?
I cried because I love art that is deeply personal and specific in sharing raw, human emotions. I discovered through my own work in organizing difficult conversations that this kind of vulnerability is the key to human connection.
I cried in admiration for Sun Mee’s courage and skill in telling her story of profound loss. Telling stories about ourselves helps make sense of the world and helps us heal.
I cried because Sun Mee’s search for truth led her to unexpected and painful places. But even a difficult truth is better than living a lie, and definitely better than living in chosen ignorance. Searching for truth demands a level of comfort, though, with the possibility that conflicting truths can exist simultaneously.
I cried because I have been asking the same fundamental human questions that Sun Mee asks in this play. Who am I? Where did I come from?
I have always been jealous of people who seemed to have clear answers to those questions, who never experienced anything that could fracture their identities.
I spent most of my life trying to be someone as certain as that by conforming and assimilating into someone else’s idea of who I should be. I ignored essential parts of myself to fit in. I discovered, though, that I could never be my best self if I continued living that way. I had to break that person apart and rebuild her into someone I liked more than the person who lived as a fraction of herself.
The quest for answers to those fundamental human questions never really ends, though, and the answers aren’t always straightforward. Sometimes searching for those answers fractured me even more. Sometimes the answers I found made me feel a little more whole.
Go see this brilliant play at Theater J before it ends on January 14. And let me know what you think!
