Satisfaction

I saw a musical, Dream Girls, last night. It shows the story of American dreams. It exactly represents "rags to riches". The main charactor got a big opportunity and became famous and rich. However while he was earning lots of money, he did some illegal work like copying other singers' songs. He thought that if people want to succeed they should do anything that make them succeed, even bad things. We can easily see some news about some rich Koreans' trying to break some laws to decrease their taxes or to give their children thier wealth. One of my teachers told me that if you want to succeed, you should be never satisfied with yourself. Honestly, I have tried to follow his advice so far. However sometimes it looked scary for me because it made me comfused. I strongly believe that people should live with pursuing happiness and satisfaction is important point of making us happy. The rich guys, who did something illegally to be richer might be never satisfied with their wealth. Are they really happy even though many people blame their behaviours? Well I can't have the answer because I'm not rich. It motivates me to be rich to know the answer...........Whatever~~.

Let it be!

To me, that U.S president's celebrating a specific religious ceremony is totally acceptable. It doesn't mean supporting or making a national religion. It's just an action that makes their relationship better like celebrating friend's birthday. In addition, the mayor's making and naming christmas tree is also acceptable because of the same reason.
Honestly, I'm still not sure about my thoughts of the seperation between states and religions. Mostly I think that it is totally right. However whenever I saw some bad news about religions, I thought that governments should control religions. I think there's no exact answer about this problem.

Bring it on

At first I just wanted to research the History of the Blues. Wow honestly it's getting more complicated than what I thought. The impact of the Blues to American musics is amazing. I can't finish it easily and simplely. I also don't want to do like that. I mean I want to master it. Step by step.

The Blues

I'm still trying to find some information about the Blues, but one thing that I'm sure about is that it is strongly related to African-Americans' responses to everyday matters such as work and love. When I traveled in Chicago, I went to a Blues bar. It was my first time to listen to Blues. Well, I don't know about every song but to me it was the best music that makes me emotional so far.
By the way, let's go Flyers!!!..........sorry.

Different living places make different values.

I was thinking about the difference between Amaericans and Koreans. There are lots of differences like appearance, food, fashion, etc. However, the biggest difference or the root of every differnce is the difference of thought.
I, the most normal Korean....whatever, think that Koreans have prefered the good relationship among neighbors and family. We have been learning the importance of the harmony with others and we are thying to work together. Of course, Americans are also trying to have good harmony with others, especially we can find this value in John Winthrop's speech easily, loving your neghbors as yourself. However, these days Americans prefer Self-reliance more than good community. What made Americans change their thoughts?
In my opinion, the most important reason is the impact of their environment. In Korea, our land of living is too limited. Unfortunately, Korea is smaller than NY state. Therefore, the only way to survive in Korea, a small land, is harmony. We can't have our own big enough living space. If we hadn't prefered harmony, we would always fought eachother to get more things for surviving. However, in America, they had to live in huge frotiers. Each person had enough land and they didn't need to share their things. They might only think how to protect their lives by themselves from native Americans, dangerous animals, also their neighbors. In these reasons made them prefer self-reliance.
I think Americans values are very different from Koreans' as much as the difference of appearance. I'm still curious about the differences and I still want to learn about American culture more.

The Flip-Flop theory

How has your life been? has everything been good? or bad? To me, it has been fluctuating. I mean it's a series of good or bad things. In fact, I'm not sure whether it's true or not, but I really want to believe that it is true. I saw a credo, the 50% theory of life. The author said that half the time things are better than normal; the other half, they are worse. Well...normal things are also available in our lives, but the important thing is even if we were in terrible situation, we could expect us to be in good situation in the future. On the other hand, even if we were in good situation, it could be also possible that we would be in bad situation. I think that this fact makes us have hopes and prevent us from being lazy at least to me. Actually, I has thought about this theory since when I was in highschool. This theory has made me think or worry a lot about my future. I'm not sure if it's good or not, but it's true that this theory helped me a lot.

That is my idea.

We can learn lots of things and we can have purposes of our lives when we examine our lives. "Unexamined life is not worth living" by Socrates.....That's what I'm saying.

Sweat the small stuff

"All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden." This is an article's title. Is that true? When I saw this sentence at first, I was so confused, because I didn't believe it. I was trying to find out the reason that proves my thought during class but I didn't. Most people usually pursue something that is hard to get. They think that the harder is more valuable. However, while they are pursuing this, they show a tendency to disregard small stuff like playing fair or sharing everything, because they believe that they already knew this. The author,Fulghum, critisized this fact. He thought that just knowing and doing what you know are totally different. Of course people know that it is important to play fair or to share everthing. However, does every person behave like that? Does every person try to obey them every moment? No way!! We wouldn't need to have any laws if everyperson behave like that. Fulghum emphasized that we should try to behave like what we learned from kindergarden instead of just pursuing higher level stuff. I just realized that he is totally right and I am also one of the people that just pursue something looks difficult. For this reason, I am going to share my homeworks with Ziad. You know what Ziad, it is good for you.

I'm sure that blogging is narcisstic

I'm Jong-young from Korea. Maybe I'm in the best English class now. I've never used blog before. I know it's shameful.
By the way, I think blogging is narcissistic. Why? I'm sure that people can't post their status or opinions on a blog if they are shy or don't have enough confidence. Just imagine that you are a shy guy and you have to make a speech in front of thousands of people. Could you make it? Never. Of course on a blog, you don't need to show your face, however a lot of people, even more than a thousand, can see your thought. To me, it's obviously true that only confident people can post their status on blog. For this reason, blogging is narcissistic.