Sometimes I feel like I’m just bumbling through life.
Doing what “needs” to be done. Entertaining seemingly urgent distractions. Putting out fires and relegating to-dos to the back burner where they’ll simmer down and scorch, creating the next fire to be put out. And all the while completely neglecting the thing I’m called to do; the thing that sets my soul alight.
Sometimes during times like that, I’m fortunate enough to encounter a signpost. An experience, a conversation, or a piece of media that grabs hold of me and shakes my priorities back into alignment.
Last week was like that. Which is why (apologies) I sent nothing for you to read. No chapter, no novel update, no essay about real-world dystopia.
And then, last night, the signpost:
I’d spent all day dragging felled pine trees around the yard, trying to get an area cleared for our next homestead project, and I was exhausted. I didn’t even have the energy to cook dinner and I had mounds of laundry to fold and I needed to do some work for a client and how was I going to budget the money for the surgery my cat needs and Chapter Five was already a day late and I still had two scenes to write (the eight people who read my emails would probably be mad if I didn’t stick to the schedule) and shit! I forgot to pay that one bill last week, was it past due yet? But for the moment I just needed something to eat so my stomach would stop growling and my mind would stop racing. I made myself a sandwich and, while I ate it, I scrolled through Twitter, as one does.
I was just scanning, not really paying attention. I’m quite sure my eyes were literally glazed over. But a familiar name in my feed made me stop scrolling.
Yeonmi Park.
If you don’t know of her, you should. Yeonmi is a North Korean defector, writer and freedom advocate. She has written an autobiography, In Order to Live (which I haven’t yet read) and her YouTube channel, Voice of North Korea, has hundreds of videos (I’ve watched almost all of them) about her life in NK, her escape, and the plight of those still enslaved by the Kim regime. This woman is incredible. Her story will open the floodgate of your tears. It will awaken the rage you keep in check because you’re just bumbling through life. It will draw out the depths of your compassion. And it will inspire you to speak out against tyranny, to use your voice, wear it out, no matter what the consequences, to abuse your freedom of speech before you lose it. It’s that potent.
Suffice it to say that she is a personal hero of mine. I already knew her story and was familiar with her thoughts on many topics, so when I saw the retweet of Jordan Peterson’s tweet promoting his recent interview of Yeonmi, I almost didn’t click over to watch the video. I just thought, “cool, I’m glad she’s getting the exposure.” But then I had to fold all that laundry and it wouldn’t hurt to have something to listen to while I did, so I put the video on and watched all two hours and eleven minutes of it.
And wow.
I won’t spoil the interview for you by summarizing all the talking points, but I will say that Peterson’s psychologist-style questioning peels back new layers of Yeonmi’s story, shifting the focus from what happened to how it changed Yeonmi as a person. It’s well worth the two hours to watch or listen. Especially the last half-hour or so, in which Yeonmi speaks about her experience at Columbia University, drawing parallels between North Korean oppression and the fashionable brand of thought policing that has taken hold in western institutions of learning.
That part was the signpost. I was reminded that dystopia doesn’t go away by itself. It doesn’t stop on the last page of 1984, when Winston’s brainwashing cycle completes in the realization that he loves Big Brother. It spreads out from there, out into reality, because novels like 1984 are written in response to real dystopia, in hopes of slowing dystopia’s progress in the world.
Dystopia didn’t end at the close of Nazi occupation or at the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it doesn’t stop at the borders of present-day North Korea. It feeds on corrupt ideology, is carried on the foul wind produced by the speeches of pundits and politicians. It creeps into social bodies, institutions, and governments, where it spreads like an invasive species. Before you know it, dystopia has woven itself into every aspect of life. It’s at your throat, strangling you. If it is going to be stopped, people like Yeonmi Park (and hopefully, a few million more like her) are needed to ceaselessly, fearlessly confront it.
That’s one of the top two reasons why I write dystopian fiction: to confront real-world dystopia. The other reason is that I love writing these stories, damn it. I just do.
All last week, dystopia kept on chugging along in the world, gathering steam. But not me. Not my fiction. I got derailed. And I can’t promise that it’ll never happen again. I’m human, and sometimes humans succumb to bumbling. But my focus is renewed now. I’ve got a fresh chapter percolating down through the mental hopper, and I’ll have it in your inbox shortly.
Thank you for reading my stories. Thank you for believing in my ability to do this. And thank you for your patience.
Here’s the video:
Thank you for reading!
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