수자원공사 웹진 물, 자연 그리고 사람

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• Sometimes, things just happen!

  For someone like me who is an ISFP type, getting ready to go out takes a significant amount of energy. Once I get out, I often go to different places before I get back home. While I get around different places, I keep thinking, ‘Should I go there another time? I feel like going home and getting some rest.’ I have to constantly fight against this temptation before I finally come back home. To my own surprise, though, I have been running a movie-watching club for two years, which convenes at a place outside my home, meaning it consumes much of my energy. At the very moment I am writing this sentence, I still find it hard to believe that I am running the club. The name of the club is “Shakshak Movie Club”. It was named after my Instagram character, Shakshak Kim. The club has 108 members and we have had 24 meetings so far. After watching a movie, we share our thoughts at the meeting, and people often ask me why I am running this club. I wish I could give them such an impressive answer that I wouldn’t even be able to believe I said it, but my answer is always humble. “Well, I don’t know. Sometimes, things just happen, you know.”

You depart to get somewhere.

After contemplating the club I am running, I have come to the realization that it is about departing from where you are to be somewhere else or to be with someone. I still remember quite vividly the first meeting that took place in June 2022. We were going to watch Broker, a Korean film by the Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu at the CGV Shinchon Artreon. Before heading to the theater, the club members met at a café in Shinchon to break the ice. One of them said he’d come all the way from Naju, a city in a southern province. ‘Seriously? He’s traveled all the way from Naju just for this meeting?’ I was almost shocked and felt sorry that he had come such a long way just to join the meeting. But I was even more surprised when he confessed to us that he thought of some stories to share with us because he was worried that his first meeting with strangers could be awkward. Upon hearing this, everybody felt moved yet guilty about coming to the first meeting without thinking ahead the way he had.
In April, 2024, we got together to watch Evil Does Not Exist, a film directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. After watching the movie at the CGV Apgujeong Art House, we went to a café. One member introduced himself as a student studying overseas. He said he was going to leave Korea the following day, but that he wanted to come to the meeting before he left. Although we all live in different places, we sometimes leave the boundaries of our life briefly to spend some time with others in the same space. When asked why they had come to the meeting, their answers were not grandiose at all, which to me was better than any fancy rhetoric.

• It’s okay to get sidetracked sometimes.

  There are two things that I find most interesting about these meetings, based on my two years of observation. First, people are allowed to get sidetracked without worrying about what others may think. But that was not the way the meetings were initially. People grew increasingly tolerant of other members who deviated from the main point. Initially, I, as the organizer of the meeting, got annoyed when people started to talk about their personal struggles instead of focusing on the film we’d seen. I found myself worrying too much about people getting sidetracked. In other words, I wanted to steer the meeting away from any distraction and lead it in the way I wanted. Instead, I decided to leave it in the hands of those who took their time to be there at the meeting. I remained silent instead of attempting to lighten up the atmosphere, even during the awkward moments. People learned to appreciate the moments of silence rather than making efforts to say something to break the silence. Each meeting is attended by different people, but everybody seems to feel comfortable, knowing they do not have to talk unless they want to. In that way, no one felt nervous or pressured when they actually talked, because they knew they were not expected to contribute insightful thoughts or analytical views to the conversation. I have found that what they really want to do is to share their stories and get a glimpse of other people’s lives through the medium of movies.
  The club gradually underwent a transformation of its identity from a group of people who love watching and talking about movies to a group of people who listen to, and learn from, others’ life stories. Instead of sharing their thoughts about the movie, we tend to spend more time sharing life stories. Sometimes the stories were even more interesting than the movie we watched, as they were full of unexpected twists and turns. Interestingly, people started to look forward to coming to the meeting because they were free to talk about whatever they wanted to share, or they could remain silent when they had nothing to say, instead of limiting the conversation to the movie of the day.
  In a way, the club meeting has followed its own course.

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A meeting of strangers can be a shelter or a sanctuary for those who wish to leave some place and find a sense of inner peace. To me, this club meeting has become a restful place where people who are practically strangers can get together, share their profound wish to unshackle themselves from life’s restraints, find a fresh momentum to live on, and then depart for the other relationships in the daily life that they’ve briefly left.

Starting a club that’s open to everyone and that one is free to leave anytime

The second interesting aspect of this club is that anyone can join or leave the club anytime they want. One of the club’s rules is that there is no regular membership. So, admission and exit are free. Normally, having regular members is good for any group activity. But in reality, no regular gathering can always be fun or useful to all. Over time, some people may get to a point where they want to leave the group. Then, they begin to develop a troubling feeling about when and how they should tell the group of their decision to leave. I did not want people to feel free in this respect, so I chose different members for each meeting. This way, they do not need to even think about whether they should leave or stay.
One day, I was told that some of the people who’d met at the club meeting had exchanged contacts and got together to form a new group. They met at this one-time gathering and then left the club, but they continued in a new relationship, based on their common interests, nurturing and enriching their relationship in a different way.
The freedom of being in a group of people who do not need to be sensitive about coming and leaving is closely linked to the idea of respecting differences in ways of thinking. As the meetings continued, I made an interesting observation. Contrary to common belief, a close-knit relationship can create a sense of distance for some people, while being new and awkward can create an odd sense of being close and connected for others. Apparently, many of the people who joined the meeting wanted to leave their relationships defined as being “close” or “intimate” in the social, conventional context. I have learned that people have a desire to break the traditional mold of defining “close” or “distant” in their relations with others and instead create new forms of closeness.
In conclusion, the coming and leaving of people is not critical for all meetings. As mentioned earlier, a meeting can serve as a spiritual shelter where those who want to leave someplace or who have already departed from something can find a sense of relief and peace. To me, this club meeting is becoming a restful place where people who are practically strangers can get together, share their profound wish to unshackle themselves from life’s restraints, find fresh momentum to live on, and then depart for other relationships in the daily life they’ve briefly left. On our way home after the meeting, one of the people who’d joined the meeting that day said the meeting was like a place of rest for him. What he said next still remains a kind of present for me: “The meeting has given me a rare experience of “harmlessness.”