Learning to Redefine Productivity

It's hard to believe that I am going into my fourth month here and am already past the halfway mark of my first semester as an ESL teacher. The time that I have spent in Korea has truly flown by. I wonder if the next 9 months will continue to fly by just as quickly.. because right now I am starting to feel like staying for just a year is no time at all and may not be enough time for me to experience Korea in the way that I would really like to...

In some recent conversations that I have had with friends and family, I have lamented the fact-- well, the feeling, really-- that I don't do anything "productive" with my life here. And I have gotten a lot of the same responses, which have challenged the way that I have been defining productivity, as well as caused me to reflect on the rightness of the way that I have been determining what is worth my time.

First, in response to my complaints and self-criticisms, I am always asked how it is that I am spending my time here. And I answer: I teach English, I work hard at it, and I try to go a good job. I spend time writing creatively, and I am making an attempt at my first novel since I was about 12 years old. I have started up a creative writing group that meets every other week, and have also joined a bi-weekly book club. I am rediscovering my inner artist, and have put my name on a waiting list for a ceramics and painting class. I go to church, and joined up with a small group studying Luke's gospel. I explore Seoul and neighboring cities, spend time with friends and continue to get to know my family. And that's it.

And the response is always simple, always the same: "What's wrong with that?"

A legitimate question. And the answer is truly nothing. But in the way that I have been living my life and constructing my values over the past few years (particularly during my time in highschool and- to an even greater degree- in college), I have warped my mind into believing differently. See, prior to coming to Korea, I had, over a number of years, founded an identity on being over-committed. I founded my identity on the amount of time and activity that I devoted to my pet causes (women's issues, human trafficking, children's rights, health care, social justice ministry in the church, etc.), and on my ability to prove my intellect through academic achievement. Doing things defined me, and I piled on commitment after commitment.

In fact, in the spring semester of my junior year, I actually ended up having a kind of nervous breakdown during exams because of this very tendency. I had taken on so much and put so much internal pressure on myself that I finally broke and could no longer function. I'll spare you the details, but my body and mind literally shut down and forced me to stop working and studying. It scared me, and I gave up studying, quit one of my jobs, informed my professors that I would be turning in my assignments late, and decided that whatever happened would simply happen-- but that I could not sacrifice my health and sanity for the sake of keeping my insane number of commitments and making the grade. The irony is that in the end, even without studying and with extensions granted by my professors, my final grades ended up being just as good or better for that semester when compared to any any other. The pressure and anxiety that I felt had been generated solely by my own attitudes and choices, rather than by any external forces.

After that semester, I spent the summer in Amman, Jordan for a study abroad program and internship. My responsibilities there, in comparison to those I had at home, were light. I was able to get away from all of my usual commitments, get out of my comfort zone and refocus and recoup. So, feeling better, I of course returned to school the next semester believing that I could take everything back on-- and possibly more-- and be able to "handle it" better this time.

Bet you can imagine how well that went. I took on more and more, even to the point of working three internships, plus two part time jobs, while completing my last semester of college. I had hit a wall in my junior year, but somehow convinced myself it had only been a small bump, because in my heart I believed the lie that if I didn't continue to keep myself busy and occupied with service-oriented activities, I wasn't living a "good" life.

Realistically, I could not keep up with everything that I had committed to do. I never had another breakdown, but instead experienced a steady decline in my ability and desire to fulfill my responsibilities and perform the tasks that I had at one time so deeply desired to do. I found myself always doing the bare minimum, cutting corners just to get by, and often feeling frustrated and resentful towards those things that I had so readily volunteered to take on.

Now, all of the above are things that I knew about myself before coming to Korea, but the reality of the matter is that old habits die hard. From the very beginning, I felt that I had to justify my coming to Korea in some way-- after all, going to Korea just to see what it was like didn't seem like a good enough reason, and teaching ESL had never been an aspiration of mine. I had tutored in ESL before and loved it, but that was under quite different circumstances. My students were Burmese refugees who were eager to learn because they had just arrived in America and needed to learn English in order to get jobs so that their families could have food and a place to live. In contrast to this experience, the idea of being a teacher in a Korean public school just didn't sit well with me-- I didn't feel that I would be meeting any real and immediate need. Rather, I would just using the job as a means to a rather selfish end (that end being travel to Korea to get to know my family history and background).

I didn't believe that I should take a year and "waste" it in Korea without a greater purpose. So, before coming here I made a list of all the things I would do to make my time here more "productive" and "worthwhile." That list included volunteering (I had a number of ideas), working on the issue of sex trafficking in and around US military bases, conducting research about North Korean freedom, and learning to speak Korean (in case I wanted to become a Foreign Services Officer). I came armed with a list of organizations and people to contact. But, upon arriving here, to the small extent that I have sought to pursue any of these ideas, doors seem to keep getting shut in my face. Besides, I have found it difficult to get things done outside of work, when I have to be either in the classroom or my office from 8-5 everyday and come home feeling pretty worn out. I would still love to pursue the things on my list, but right now, with my job and with my lack of knowledge about the language and culture here, the timing is not right.

And I have realized that I should be contented with that, and that maybe I should even see it as a gift. Perhaps this is a season of preparation and rest that God is granting me. And who am I to say that it is not worthwhile and good?

I have naturally gravitated in my time here towards the kinds of activities that fill me up and give me genuine joy, but which were completely neglected and overshadowed by my need to achieve and to be "productive" in the past-- activities like writing, expressing myself creatively, and studying and learning simply for the pure love of it.

And I think that this could be exactly what I need-- perhaps it is even the reason that I am here; to learn contentedness, and to learn how to rest well, so that in the future I can love and serve better.