My Best Friend Older Than Me
Korean people tend to be so sensitive with age gap. Therefore, when we meet people first, it is natural that asking each other's age directly and it decides how we treat each other. Even one year old gab is considered huge in Korea and we should be polite to them. In Korea, 'friend' means a person who's close with me having same age. I have heard a lot from my foreign friends that why many Korean people hang out and become friends only with the same age people. Even we use polite language when we talk with older people. It is not only for the real old people like our grandparents but also for same young people who are just one or two years older than me.
Therefore, many people are curious about my friendship with one of my best friend. Among my friends, there is whom I love most whose name is Hani. She is five years older than me but we have many common things and we are connected deeply so much. We meet regularly at least once in a week and both of us like drinking and hanging out. I made a reservation at her favorite bar and we started to catch up. After moment, I said her.
"Hani, there is something I should do and I think you are the one who can help me. Can you help me?"
She started to laugh and asked me back. "What do you mean? What should I do?"
I said. "Just answer very frankly to my questions. Can you do that?"
"Of course. I think it will be fun" She looked very interesting.
We know almost everything about each other so I asked her about some questions that we usually talked about. I asked my first question.
"As you know, whenever people heard our age gap, they were always curious how we could become so close like this. Do you think what made us so closer and what is the most important thing to maintain friendship?"
Actually, I asked this question because I wanted to get some tips from her. She is really good at managing relationship with people which I am not good at.
She slightly smiled and started to speak in calm voice.
"I don't have a prejudice toward people and I always respect every person even if who is way much younger than me. There must be something I can learn from those people."
Then I asked her. "Do you mean that you like all the people around you? How is it possible?"
She smile again and said. "I am not a Jesus or Buddha so I do not and can not like all the people I know. But at least I don't draw any boundary between a person near me and myself. I am always open-minded and try to see the good things in people. However, if there are only bad things in someone and the relationship with that person looked made me ill, I drastically give up that relationship. It's also important."
After hearing her answer, I realized again why I like her so much. She is always wise and behave appropriately. Also, I am very interested in her life which is totally different with me so I asked about her career.
"You majored western art in college but now you are working as a fashion editor. Is there any differences between those two works and any difficulties in your job?"
She listened my question very carefully and then started answering.
"When I draw a picture, there was no guideline and my inspiration was the only thing I could follow. But in magazine industries, there is customer's demand and we need to deal with and follow that continuously. Also, Magazine is printed every month so we have to make successful output per month. Meeting a deadline is very stressful work for me. Therefore sometimes I feel something tightened me and pressed."
Actually, we usually had conversation related our personal issue and didn't talk much about her career deeply. Though I started this interview as an assignment but we spent really good time. It was a chance that I get to know her more.
Hi, my name is Kye-yong Lee. I read your writing enjoyingly and it was so much impressive.
ReplyDelete1. I liked the theme of your essay because have an empathy with your story. My best frineds were all at least 3-5 older than me since I was young.
2. Mostly the writing was understandable easily. If I must say the part that can be clearer, it would be the sentence "we have many common things and we are connected deeply so much." I think that sentence will seem clearer when you add more about how you two were connected deeply.
3. I think the most important idea in this writing is that the writer has the best "friend" who is older than her even if people call people a friend only when of the same age in Korea. So it shows that people can be a best friend regardless of the age.
4. I think the part "I am not a Jesus or Buddha so I do not and can not like all the people I know" is effective enough to transmit what she intends.
5. I think in this writing the right number of quotations was used. In the beginning and the end of the writing, quotations were not used and in the answering parts they were used properly.
6. I think on the whole it was well written. It would be even better if the line spacing were adjusted evenly.