#second 20s

Being a target audience is a funny thing.  There’s definitely media I consumed as a pre-teen and teen that I just didn’t get.  I thought it was pretty cool but I had no idea why someone was sharing it with me or why it touched them so deeply.  In specific there was a lesson in a high school class one of my teachers did on the Pink Floyd song Time.  During the lesson I could connect with the thematic pieces of it, even the intellectual enjoyment of it, but I didn’t feel much of anything.  As I got older, though, it started to hit harder and I kept circling back to that moment since it was such a touchstone.  I feel like this drama has some similar qualities to it as the Pink Floyd song.  Let me explain.

Ha No-Ra is floating through life, living for her husband and son, when her personal universe is upended by an impending divorce and other life shaking news.  As a result she decides to go to college, an experience she missed out on from getting pregnant way too young, and consequently runs into her childhood friend Cha Hyun-Seok who is a professor at her school.  No-Ra and Hyun-Seok start out antagonistic due to Hyun-Seok’s issues from the past, but for every weird petty thing he did there was also the realization that he was acting a fool and then improvement in their current relationship.  He was a great foil for No-Ra’s deadbeat husband Kim Woo-Chul, as well.

“People who choose to drown themselves ultimately plea for help at the end. That is being human. To live because you can't die, or to find something as you live. The choice is yours.”