Chuseok essay - 'Existentialism of Chuseok' (improved version)

It's early Thursday morning, but your mother's busy footsteps wake you up. You wake up and with half-opened eyes and 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, 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 sleep early because you have to be prepared for some exhausting events scheduled tomorrow. 

Your family will do two things tomorrow: grave cleaning and ritual ceremony - jesa. You have to visit your ancestor's grave and cut some long grass to make it an oval-shaped dome. After a long trip to somewhere inside a mountain, you arrive at your ancestor's grave. Now your work - grave gardening - starts, it's a lot of work indeed. Even after you finished it, you can't rest until the jesa ends. You go back home and in the house, your mom is preparing a mountain of food for ancestors. Then family members bow to the candle in front of the foods. Eventually, that's all for the duty.

This is how the 'Chuseok' would look like. It is a national holiday in Korea, a traditional ceremony practiced for hundreds of years. Just looking at the description of it invokes emotions like irritating, exhausting, outdated, meaningless, and all the other negative feelings. It is not the first design; The tradition starts to unite the family and reinforce family spirit, but the original purpose is soon shadowed and only tiring duties are left. 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, and we know how to love family without duty.

Our family doesn't need a duty and 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, playing the piano, or just taking a nap, as a normal life. There are no empty customs like Ritual ceremonies, grave cleaning, cooking Korean fries, bowing, advising, or even Korean poker. They can be thought of as important traditions, but we just don’t give meaning to them if the cost to protect tradition isn't worth it. Instead of keep practicing unworthy traditions, we adopt existentialism, the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre which says existence precedes essence. It means our family doesn't care about the actual form but if it operates well. For example, our family just prepares normal foods, not a jeon which is a Korean traditional fry for Chuseok. We don’t think the love of family should be transferred by the existence of jeon, but the meaning of jeon as a Chuseok food can be embodied by a normal cuisine or even a cake. On Chuseok, my grandmother always makes my favorite food spicy octopus, even if it is hard to buy octopus all the time, she somehow finds it and makes me that food. It is not a traditional Chuseok food, but I could fill the love of family is overflowing without taking the form of traditional food. On this Chuseok, my grandmother made that food again, and I could taste the infinite love and family spirit in it, much more than just eating jeon.

Also, we know how to love each other. We give no duty, but we do our best for each other. It is stimulated by our love toward family, not a stressful push. Chuseok is invented as a pushing tool to make every family in Korea find values of love and respect in family relationships. Making some duties like jesa mandated and authorized Chuseok, but our family doesn't need them to share happiness with family. We ignore mandated works and do what we want. Watch TV together, play the piano, and play with relatives. Therefore, Chuseok has never been stressful, cause we don’t feel responsible for keeping the exhausting traditions. It is a day to show love toward family. We know that forcing tradition really does not give any help to family, so we adopt existentialism here, too. Tradition is an anti-existentialism that defines only one form for such an operation, in order to make it easy for everyone to do it. It is similar to teaching tennis. When we first learn tennis, the instructor teaches us to hit a ball only with a standard position, and after we are able to pass the ball over the net, then we learn to put spins on the ball. Since our family can pass the ball fluently, we don't need the standard position. We respect each members’ lifestyles, so we just spend time as usual rather than an uncomfortable meeting. Not only the ritual ceremony can unite the whole family, but just the fact that they are living together in one house can compose a strong family relationship. We can feel love of family by the way of existentialism.

           It’s early Thursday morning, and I am sleeping at my 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's very different from the first; a Silent and comfortable atmosphere. It is a happy day with my family, and I want to say thanks to Jean-Paul Sartre.