Why I Live Abroad
If you don’t already know, I currently work as an English Teacher in China, and before that I worked as an English teacher in South Korea. At no point in high school or university did I envision such a path, yet for more than a decade I’ve been living a nomadic-English teacher lifestyle for more than a decade and I have no plans to give it up in the immediate future. While inspirational storytelling and work with TBI is my passion, I have not yet found a way to make a reasonable living income from this work, but I do believe that’s partly due to the fact that I’ve never devoted myself to building a career as a storyteller, its remained this ideal t. Recently I was asked by my mom why I never focused more intently on my storytelling goals and why I decided to spend so many years abroad. I’ve been asked this before by various persons, and typically I find a way to sidestep away from any direct answer, but when my mother asked I took a serious look at the question, and this was the answer I found.
I was just beginning studies for my graduate program in Storytelling at East Tennessee State University when I shared a recently composed storytelling with my academic advisor, Dr. Joseph Sobol. He kindly listened to the work, and offered an important criticism, “Lethan, this piece…it’s not bad, but it doesn’t feel like your story. It feels like you’re reciting someone else’s work. You just don’t have the lived experience yet.”
These words were hard to take in, and shook my youthful pride as a storyteller. I also don’t think I actually understood what he meant, but as a good student the criticism was accepted and I moved into the next stage of my life as a student, my hope being that studying under this man for the next few years would grant me some of the experience he spoke about.
It didn’t.
At least, I don’t think my studies in the program gave me the life experience he was talking about, and I feel certain he would agree. I am grateful for my time at the university and I learned many important lessons about storytelling and life, but the experience he spoke of at that early meeting comes from living, and when I graduated I was a young man in my twenties who had lived a relatively sheltered existence — I didn’t have much experience. To be sure, there was my brain injury, and that was an experience that colored much of how I viewed the world, but in retrospect, I see that hadn’t lived enough to grant that experience the context it needed. And getting meta, I reread that sentence after writing it, and don’t know if it entirely makes sense — I struggle to find any other words that can grant a fuller meaning — much like my understanding of recovery at the time, as I didn’t have the further experiences that would provide my TBI with a fuller meaning.
To be sure, none of this was conscious in my mind when I made the decision to travel to Korea and then China as an English Teacher, but I did know I wanted to expand the pallet of experiences that I use to color the stories I tell. I feel certain that some remnant of Dr. Sobol’s words were resonating in my soul as I signed my first contract to teach ESL.
This essay strays from the typical focus if this blog on brain injury, but I bring it up to remind survivors that TBI is only one event, and while it is an important event that cannot be ignored, it is only one shade from the spectrum of colors that paint your life. Don’t focus only on one aspect of what you experience but explore the tones and tints that capture a full, vibrant life. Assuming you have lived after TBI, and if you’re reading this I think it is a safe assumption, alway know that brain injury, or any tragedy you survive, is not a final event. A tragedy is something that occurred and that memory will be painful, but it can also be processed through the infinity of events that will continue to happen. You are alive, and you must let your story grow as you continue to live.
Taken: Haeinsa Temple, South Korea - picture from first year abroad.
PS: You may have already heard or read about my goal of returning to China…I’m happy to say it was a success and I am joyfully reunited with my wife and working at a respected bilingual school in China. That said, I had trouble reconnecting to all my accounts when I first arrived, so I couldn’t make any posts. But I am here now and finally figuring out how everything works, so I hope to start making more regular posts. Keep in touch and I look forward to sharing more stories soon.
