Books, My Dad, and the Circle of Life

One of my most cherished memories with my dad was how we spent late night sitting at a round table at his study. I was a teenager — probably 13. He was my age — mid 40s.

My dad was a columnist so he had to write a column every night for the next day. After all the busy things were taken care of during the day, those wee hours into the midnight were the only time he could sit down in his small study. He read, thought and put his thoughts into words on the paper (he was always a handwriting guy — never got familiar with technologies), surrounded by stacks of books and articles he scrapped from all kinds of papers and magazines.

I sat across from him, doing my own things — doing homework, studying for exams, or just perusing all kinds of magazines and books he had in his study from the Times to the history of suicide and the short stories by Françoise Sagan. There were so many books not appropriate for my age, but my dad never stopped me from reading them. I loved it.

We didn’t talk much. He was a man of letters, not words. I didn’t know how to have conversations with him. He was a heavy smoker (and he was allowed to smoke in his room) so the room would be filled with smoke. So I often nagged him to go easy on smoking or quit, reminding him that his daughter was exposed to secondhand smoking. Without showing any reaction, he would stop smoking for like 5 min and went back to smoking again. There was nothing special about those nights in his study. With very little conversation, sometimes all I could hear was the sound of flipping pages, his pencil touching the surface of the paper as he wrote, and random noises from the street. But I was there almost every night.

Then finally I learned how to make him talk. Reading a random article from Newsweek about some political events in other countries, I asked him why that was happening. He said, “Hmmmm…” and left it there. No answer. Typical, I thought, and went back to my homework or my perusing of the night with some other books. A couple of nights later, some books about the history of that country showed up on his table. He said, “These books will answer your question from the other day.” Then he went back to his business of the night, with his dear friends: cigarettes, a pen and paper.

This was quite surprising for me on many levels. I’ll tell you why. 1) He remembered my question, 2) He ANSWERED to my question and 3) WE WERE HAVING A CONVERSATION FINALLY!

I was kind of taken aback, not knowing how to process it exactly. But I immediately devoured those books. The books were way beyond what my 13 year old brain could understand. Some geo-political stuff with a lot of words, sentences, and contexts I couldn’t understand. But I read them anyway. From that night, I started asking him questions about all sorts of things I was curious about the world. Then he would answer with books, magazines, or a bundle of articles he scrapped for me.

For some questions I asked him, he would look at me quite intently. It was as if he was expressing his surprise, “Oh, that’s an interesting question from a 13 year old!”. You have no idea how much I cherished those moments when my curiosity sparked his curiosity. I wanted to ask him more smart-ass questions, so I picked up more topics from what I read and thought about. Sometimes I shared what I wrote with him for some writing homework for school. He didn’t comment much on them but he would always respond with books or articles later about topics I showed interest.

Looking back, I know now that we both were going through some difficult times. For him — his marriage was falling apart. He and my mom were going through divorce. Financially it was tough too for both of them. I was old enough to be aware of all those situations but felt really helpless. I was too young to do anything about what was going on in my family. The only thing I could take control of was my own study, so I focused on getting good grades. But school life wasn’t just about grades. Being a teenager, as my mind was cloudy with all the tragedies happening in my family, I felt so self-conscious that I didn’t know how to connect with anyone at school. I felt alone at school with no one to talk to. Sometimes I wouldn’t say a word at school and a day would go by, but I knew I was yearning for connection so deeply.

No wonder why those late night “silent” conversations were such delights to my 13 year old self. Although I didn’t get to talk about what I was feeling or how I was hurting internally at that time, it still mattered. Through books, I felt connected with my dad.

I don’t know what it meant to him or how he remembers about those days now. As a Korean man from the Boomer generation — he doesn’t speak the language of emotional intelligence. But when I told him recently that I wrote a book and it would be published in January 2025, I saw the same spark in his weary eyes. The same spark he showed when my 13 year old self asked him questions that intrigued him.

“When is it going to be published?” He asked.

“in January 2025 but it’ll take some time until it gets published in Korea because I need to find a publisher and also translate it myself, dad. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah I know. I just want to see it out in the world. I cannot wait to see it whether in English or Korean.”

“I cannot wait to see it”. That punctured a hole in my heart. His lung cancer reemerged from remission as the 4th stage cancer this time. The chemotherapy has been really tough on his body and mind. He has not been sleeping or eating well. Losing hair and weight left and right.

Yesterday, I flew to see him in Korea urgently. “Where is your book? Did you bring it?” This was the first thing he asked me out of some hallucination due to sedatives.

“It’s not out yet, dad. But it will be soon. You will be the very first person to get the copy. I promise.” I replied. When I came back to my hotel room, I cried like a baby for a while.

Books were how my dad and I connected with each other. Through books he handed to me, I felt loved, trusted, and supported by him. By suggesting those books to me, basically, his message was “I can answer your question but I want you to think of your own answer and these books could be helpful for that.” What he taught me was how to think for myself, because he trusted me, and I cannot thank him enough for that because it has become the biggest asset for everything in my life.

Since he has been back to the cancer treatment, he broke out of the unspoken rule of “no emotions, please” and started sharing about regrets of his life. One day, he told me that he was sorry for not being there when I really needed him. Sure, there were moments I wished he were there but we never talked about those times explicitly. In my adulthood, I spent many hours in therapy, coaching, reading books and meditation to heal my wounds from those times. Those wounds left some scars, but they were healed now. I thanked him for sharing that and told him it was ok now. But he still seemed to be in a deep hole of regrets.

I still don’t know whether my dad will be able to stay on until next January to get hold of my book with his hands. I really hope so but it’s beyond our control to optimize his life to the publishing date of my book. But as he demands to see my book with his own eyes, I wonder, perhaps, if my book could be some sort of an answer to his question “Was I a good father?”

I have no idea how my very first book, <The Placeholder: The Place to Go to Create Your Noble Work>, will do. But one thing I can tell my dad is that I could write it because of what he taught me through all the books he handed me over to answer my random questions. Those books cultivated my mind. I learned how to think for myself and create my own ideas, thanks to him.

The circle of life is such a weird thing. We intellectually know how it starts, ends, and is intertwined with others. Intellectually at best. But we don’t fully grasp its meaning until either we or our loved ones are at the end of that cycle. It’s a perspective we can fully grasp only retrospectively.

There are many hopes I had for my book. I hope that it actually helps people in the placeholder phases of their lives. I hope that this book could help me grow as a coach and a thought leader for organizational wellbeing, too. But I didn’t know that my book would be an answer to my dad’s lifelong question:“Was I a good father?”

Yes, dad. You were, and you will always be.

For me, this was one good hell of a reason to write this book.

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