Korean Expat Community for National Disasters

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What is snow,

but only rain

taking its time

to fall

and stay?

Perhaps one of the most popular film for this Christmas season beside the Home Alone series is “It’s a Wonderful Life” directed by Frank Capra in 1946. In that classic, we see a man who has been good all his life contemplating suicide during Christmas, but then an angel appeared and let him see a parallel world where he did not exist. He saw the sadness of the people he loves, and realized that he wants to live. As he returned to his world, his friends, the people that he helped before, gathered and helped him with his problem that made him contemplate suicide in the first place. It was a happy ending.

Relatively recently in 2010, an animated movie, “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”, was released. It was about how a man got tired of every extraordinary or supernatural things that always happened whenever he’s with a girl named “Haruhi”, a young woman who has godlike powers but is unaware of it. One winter morning, he found that his wish was granted and that he’s in a world where Haruhi is not his classmate. Finally, there are no extraordinary things happening like repeating the same summer vacation a thousand times, at least, with the exception of Haruhi’s disappearance. But instead of being happy, he found himself desperately searching for her. And later on he discovered that it was their alien friend, “Yuki” who risked everything to grant his wish and altered the reality of the universe. But Yuki left him a last chance to choose whether to stay in that altered world and enjoy a quieter life with her, or go back to the original one. He has chosen the original. It was a bittersweet ending.

I think we know and often heard so many times the saying that we will only know the value of something or someone when realize that something or someone may be lost for us forever. The famous song by Passenger, “Let Her Go”, reflects that along with the aforementioned two movies. But sometimes or oftentimes, we also forget that, as after watching these movies, we may wish that we have such a warm community as in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, or an exciting high school life in “The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya”. Again, we forget, for a moment, the value of what we have or the “present”.

It does not have to be perfect.

I owe Meg Hunter-Kilmer for her reflection on the first film for this.

It does not have to be perfect to be happy.

As I see for the first time the white blessing from the heavens covering everything—Eulalia—the little snowmen and ducklings that children and even grown-ups make with them, and remembered their ephemeral nature, I sighed and I thanked God for my existence, for this day.

“‘Yuki’, means snow, right?”