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"I'll have an iced americano with extra cream and sugar, thanks," I order at the nearest café after checking in at the hotel. I chose a really great place with a view of the ocean, so I can watch the sunset from my balcony, and access the beach at any time of the day.
I grab my coffee and sit at a table, pulling out my notebook that I bought specifically for this trip. It's completely empty, which excites me, but also pressures me, because what I fill it with has to be perfect. Or maybe it doesn't. I can't seem to decide yet.
I must look strange to others, a huge guy wearing a reverse black snapback on his head while sipping a tiny plastic cup of iced coffee through a straw, tapping my pen against a notebook, sitting all alone at a beach-side cafe. But then again, people here look like they come from all walks of life. It fascinates and inspires me, enough to begin writing. Just one sentence.
I walk among the people, like a cedar among pines, different yet the same, just a tree among trees.
I smile, satisfied, before doodling a little tree beside the sentence and then writing namu, my nickname that my little sister used to call me, because I'm tall, like a namu, which means tree in Korean. And because my name is Namjoon.
How funny is it that we are all made of the same stuff, be it vessels or tissue or cells, however once you give us a name, we are immediately distinguished, differentiated – divided. Much like the cedar and pine who both start out as seeds in the ground, both require photosynthesis and nutrients from the soil, however, we, the divided ones, decide to divide them with scientific names, when, in essence, are they not just trees? Are we not, in essence, just humans?
Are we not, in essence, all the same?
🌻
"Same!"
The girl before me jumps in delight, excited to discover that we are both big fans of Coldplay. Her name is Cameron – but I can call her Cammie for short! – and she's my extremely enthusiastic roommate from Los Angeles, California, here to study as a vet, or as she likes to put it, "wildlife healer."
I love her already.
"Come on, lemme show you around! This place is totally awesome!" she tugs me out of our room, leaving my suitcase, which I wanted to start unpacking as soon as I arrived but that was before I met Cammie the wildlife healer.
And she's totally right. The campus is so large that it's a wonder she doesn't get lost as she shows me the libraries, the lecture theatres, the art gallery, and finally, the Japanese garden.
"Oh my god, it's...it's beautiful!" I take in the dark twisting river reflecting the cluster of trees and bordered by manicured bright green lawns and stones. The place exudes serenity and natural beauty like no other place I have ever seen, and I already know I will visit here often in the near future.
