Man: “Let’s break up…”
Woman: (almost crying) “Why should we?”
Man: Just think. If we get married, we need to live on my paltry salary. Out of that meager amount, we pay rent, utility, etc., which means that we live on debt. Every month. There’s no hope. I don’t want that life. Let’s just break up.”
On the other day when I got home, my wife said she really pity young people in Korea. They must feel quite crushed, she said. She quoted the above conversation from a soap opera when I asked why she thought so. And I could totally understand what she meant. They must feel really hopeless. House prices are exorbitantly high, income is what it is, and there is a very sharp distinction between the moneyed and the moneyless in Korea. It must be very hard to live there. This probably explains why Koreans chase money more than before. People greet each other with “earn big money,” and they joke about hitting the jackpot.
It reminded me of my past years when I was about 30. Just married, I was living in my parent’s house at that time. It’s been just a couple years since I got my job and my salary was really a pittance. And I happened to accompany someone to a model house for a new apartment complex in a new town. There, I saw a perfect apartment for us, about 800 square feet in size, and it was just beautiful. I could not help dreaming of moving into this dream apartment and spend our honeymoon years there. Well, the price of this dream apartment was too high for me to even dream of buying it.
My parents were financially okay at that time, but I never thought of asking their help, and unlike here, Korean banks lent only 20 percent of the house price. It meant that people had to have 80 percent of the full price in their account to buy a house. That was why I could not even dream of buying that perfect apartment. Broken hearted, we came back home and took a walk after dinner, looking up countless lighted windows in surrounding apartment buildings. I remember how depressed and hopeless I felt, realizing that not one of them was mine, and probably never would be even if I saved for the rest of my life.
According to simple math, I was destined to live without a house of my own, but things turned out differently. I am now in my 50s, and I enjoy the level of life that I thought was impossible for me. And so do my colleagues at that time. We did our best in our 30s, and our lives began to stabilize by the end of our 30s. And in our 40s, our level of life upgraded significantly.
Therefore, young people, do not give in to despair now. Just grow your skills step by step and endeavor to reach your potentials. Don’t chase money now. Right now certain amount of money might look too tempting to resist, but later you come to realize that that is nothing. God never places us in meaningless trials. If you make God the center of your life, do not mess your life, follow the righteous path, then you will weather all trials, and your life will surely be stabilized.
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