Forgive the past: Pachinko, NYC and hope

Is forgiveness a freedom or a bond?

I was planning on having these be regular, but last week I was traveling to NYC for my birthday and the following weekend was a migraine-weekend, i.e. nothing gets done. I am still hopeful that I can make this regular. So bear with me. I will also tie this all in.

I am still in love with the show Pachinko. The last episode of season 2 had so many moments that tore my heart with excitement, dread and heart-break. And I am going to talk about a scene, which is not the one all over the internet. It is between the older Sunja and an older Japanese man she has befriended. They are sweet. It is like they are dating. But #spoileralert…

He has a past with the Japanese army of participating in a massacre of Americans. And while Sunja is not American, the horrors of what Japan did to Korea, her people, her community, her family, herself - is too much for her to forgive him.

The man clearly regrets his experience and his participation. He also clearly sees how wrong Japan was in how it treated Korea and its people. He is a good man, who has learned from his past, and sees past what he has been told to believe (like what he was told in the Army). He now makes his own judgments about people, seeing them for who they are.

When it is clear she will no longer see him, he asks her if she can ever forgive the past. She answers (paraphrasing), we cannot un-carry the past. And he answers (paraphrasing), but then we will always be chained by it.

Sunja is unmoved by his response, and it chilled me.

I have spent so much time unchaining myself from my past. Seeing the past more clearly, learning how little my younger self understood, and digging deep to understand, grow and love more deeply. For me the past is filled with unlove, doubt, distrust. The past is filled with all the times I didn’t know love was real and I was worthy of it.

Ironically, people might have called me very emotional, who made choices based on love or passion, but it was always desperation mixed with hope, but filled with fear. I had no idea how much fear I had. I had no idea how much I was willing to sacrifice myself to be loved. I had no idea that wasn’t love.

And unchaining myself from the past means not only forgiving myself, but also those who were crucial to my story. It doesn’t mean they get a pass. It does mean I see clearly. I feel clearer. I get to choose how and when and who I love. The freedom with that is… immeasurable. Because one of the ones I love more deeply now is myself.

Don’t get it twisted. I am not perfect at it. But at least I know it. I see it. I feel it… in my bones. My love is real, grounding, calm, steady and warm.

So, I wanted Sunja to forgive this man his past, but I also perfectly understood why she could not. The decades of oppression, torture, second-class citizenship that, technically, had still not ended for the Koreans in Japan was… not… the past.

And now I am reckoning with how much I carry the past with me. NYC, one of my many homes, showed me that the past will always be with you. I partly grew up in NYC. My formative early-twenties were spent partying, cafe-hopping and concert-going in NYC. I kept saying to my sixteen year-old goddaughter, “This used to be different.” Just as much as I said, “This hasn’t changed at all.”

My birthday, my 50th, made everything that much more poignant. I was realizing while I had changed, there was so much that would never change about the world, about me, about how I feel. And this was actually beautiful. I was loved my week in NYC.

The past was insistent and lovely and painful, but all of it was sweet, sharp and mine - even when it was physically gone. I realized it was an honor to carry my past, my joy, my love, my pain, my hope, my heartbreak, my passion, my brightness, my darkness. How fully me it all is.

Story: These past few weeks I have been doing a deep-dive into the prologue of my book, which sets up the stakes for the whole Trilogy, not just Book 1. And what I realized was missing was clarity on how Naima, my protagonist, was clearly repeating patterns from her ancient ancestors - and how those patterns define the stakes. Even though Naima thinks of herself as alone, an outsider, an alien to every species, a meaningless and forgotten piece the multiverse, she is re-living a deep pattern started by women thousands of years before her birth. She is reliving their search for an antidote to the constant grief and death surrounding them. To add to it, the pattern of losing everyone and still surviving is the inter-generational trauma that makes her part of her community, not apart from it.

Naima is not only trying to unchain herself from the past, she assumes is already unchained and unbound by history. But my prologue (which is what happens after the plot ends, but given to the reader at the beginning), lets you know she is going to learn that she is more deeply connected to her history and her ancestors than she could ever imagine. She is not alone. She is scarred. She has lost so much, but she is not alone. She carries her past, her ancestors, generations with her - their grief, but also their hope. She is unchained, but also completely bound by her past.

This will be a process for her during all three books. And so I think I have come up with the greater themes for each of the books of the trilogy.

Book 1: Truth = break the rules around your story

Book 2: Truth = learn the truth about your story

Book 3: Truth = create a new story.

Naima has to learn how to hope… and that love is real. That is going to take all three books. And honestly, it might take me these three books to learn it for myself.

How are you unchained from your past? How do you carry your past?

(picture taken by my 7 year-old godson in NYC)