One more Chuseok, please

It's early Thursday morning, but your mother's busy footsteps wake you up. You wake up and with the half-opened eyes, you wear some neat clothes. Soon the family gets into the car, then you close your eyes, leaning on the shoulder of your brother, sleeping as well. After a few bumping sounds heard, now you are in your grandmother's house. You meet your grandmother and hug each other. Relatives are sitting on the sofa, and you hug them too. You want to play with nephews, but it is better to save it and get into sleep early because you have to be prepared for some exhausting events scheduled tomorrow.

It is how the traditional Chuseok would look like. However, my family's Chuseok has never looked like that before. It's not exhausting, but rather relieving, relaxing, and restful. On a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of exhaust, I'd rate my Chuseok a 0. Literally, there's no work to do on Chuseok in my family.

We don't have any duty, but we perfectly keep the purpose of the Chuseok, the family union. How? It is simple. We just meet each other and spend time together, watching TV, play the piano, or just taking a nap, as a normal life. There is no empty customs like Ritual ceremonies, grave cleaning, cooking Korean fries, bowing, advising, or even Korean poker. It can be thought of as a Korean tradition, but we just don’t give a meaning to them if they have harms more than goods. Following the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, we adopt existentialism, which says, existence precedes essence. For example, our family just prepare normal foods, not a jeon, Korean traditional fries for Chuseok. We don’t think the way how the love of family should be transferred by the existence of jeon, but it can be embodied by a normal cuisine or even a cake. The food my grandmother makes has a deep love toward the family, and I think it works for the purpose better than jeon. On Chuseok, my grandmother always makes my favorite food, spicy octopus, and even it is hard to buy octopus all the time, she somehow finds it and makes me that food. On this Chuseok, my grandmother made that food again, and I could feel the infinite love by it, much more than just eating a jeon.

Also, we know how to love each other. Since I was a kid, I have never seen relatives fighting each other. Respecting each other, we had a harmonious family reunion. We gave no duty to each other, but we did our best to each other. It is stimulated by our love toward family, not a stressful push. Chuseok is never stress, cause we don’t feel responsible for keeping the traditions, but it is a day how to show the love toward family. We know that forcing to keep tradition really does not give any help to family, so we adopt existentialism here, too. We respect each members’ lifestyles, so we just spend time as usual rather than an uncomfortable meeting. We can feel love, by the way of existentialism.

           It’s early Thursday morning, and I am sleeping in the grandmother’s house. My mother doesn’t wake me up until 11 A.M, so I will keep sleeping. Soon the nephews come, and I play the piano with them. Uncle comes and I give a hug to him. It is a happy day with my family, and I want to say, one more Chuseok, please.