How Many Times Do You Have to Waver Before You Feel Like an Adult?

For a while in the 2010s, South Korean public life seemed to have a ready word for the troubles of young people: healing. There were good reasons to want reassurance. It could also feel as though consolation was being asked to do work that called for better conditions and policies.

Kim Rando was a central figure in that moment. It Hurts Because You’re Young, published at the end of 2010, found a large audience and made him widely known.

A Book of Consolation for Adults

After the success of that book, Kim wrote for readers who were supposed to have grown up and still felt uncertain about what they were doing.

The two books are close in tone. Kim writes as though he has time to sit with the question, which is part of what made the later book easy to turn to.

Reading It around Graduation

I came to it around the time I finished university. I had to start looking for work. I was less sure what I wanted to do once I found some.

I did find a job at a public enterprise. It answered the immediate question without settling the rest. I read a number of books then, trying to give my thoughts an order I could live with. This was one of them.

A Story about Moso Bamboo

In the earlier book, Kim had used the image of a clock for a whole life. Here he tells a story about moso bamboo.

In Kim’s account, the bamboo spends years developing out of sight before the shoots appear to grow almost by the day. He uses the image of underground growth to get at the work you do before anything shows above ground.

It can feel as though you’ve spent years in the same place. The bamboo story asks you to consider what might already have changed while you were waiting for a result other people could see.

What Early Success Can Leave You Unprepared For

There was another line I found reassuring in my twenties, outside this book. It said that succeeding very early was something to be careful about.

I didn’t know what to make of it at first. Early success sounded good from where I was. I began to understand it after I’d had more things go wrong.

What seemed like a string of failures at the time gave me some practice in getting through one. I learned a little about how to keep my head when the result wasn’t the one I wanted.

I also came to take time and effort more seriously, and to recognise a smaller success when it happened.

Without those years, something relatively ordinary could have taken me much longer to get over.

A Life with No Television in the Room

Kim discusses watching television as a familiar way Koreans spent their free time.

The form that takes has changed since the early 2010s. Streaming and online video give people a different way to spend much the same stretch of time.

I grew up without watching much television. When I moved to Seoul and lived on my own, I never bought a set. I still haven’t.

Without a television there, I read or find something else to do. I used to play games more often. Over time other things began to interest me more.

I don’t expect to buy one now. A television can keep a room from going quiet, but it can also make it easier to let the conversation go. If all I want is a little sound, I can put the radio on my phone.

Adults Waver Too

Kim’s last thought is that adults worry and waver too. When I first read him, that felt close to my own life. Returning to the book in my late thirties, I felt it less keenly.

I still have doubts. They rarely feel as large as they did then. I have more faith in working in a direction I’ve chosen, even if where I end up is a little different from the point I first had in mind.

I can still feel some gratitude for the consolation he was trying to offer. The fact that I need it less now doesn’t take away what it gave me then.

Book Information

You Have to Waver a Thousand Times to Become an Adult (Korean title, translated)

Author

Kim Rando

Publication date

16 August 2012

ISBN13

9788954618984

View the book on YES24

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