[K-LIT REVIEW] ‘I Decided to Live as Me’ presents insightful surprises

By Arlo Matisz

Self-help is a cluttered genre. From personal finance to weight loss, from spiritual connection to making friends and influencing people, any facet of life with which we could possibly need assistance has been exhaustively catered to. As times change, lessons need updating, so it's unsurprising that each year brings new titles solving classic problems with contemporary solutions. With this in mind, I had doubts about what new insights or perspectives "I Decided to Live as Me" by Kim Suhyun could offer. How surprised I was!

One of the most standout attributes of "I Decided to Live as Me" is the amount of specific references to life in Korea. This book offers a very useful perspective of various components of Korean history and culture. More interestingly, through a combination of personal anecdotes, OECD statistics, development history and cultural analysis, this book effectively describes the reasons for and evolution of specific goals and values in Korean culture that contribute significantly to both the author’s unhappiness and societal ennui as a whole.

The insights are both relatable and explanatory. This work so effectively illustrates the crossroads at which Korea’s culture currently loiters, that one wonders if the novel should be considered essential reading for government social welfare policymakers!

The writer accomplishes a multilateral attack on some of the central problems in society in one simple and memorable sentence: “A society that creates debtors out of ordinary people is a sick society.” However, the lesson in that step, "Don’t Put Yourself Down," is that we can’t blame ourselves for accruing debt when it is obviously society’s plan for us. The encouragement of personal accountability for one’s own feelings while simultaneously acknowledging the inherent unfairness in Korea’s societal design and social pressures are major themes of this novel.

This is not to say that the perspective is only beneficial to someone living in Korea or wishing to learn about Korea. The problems discussed are universal concerns in the age of information and social media. Certain elements of Korean culture simply act as a lens that magnifies and intensifies many of these problems. While we all face them to some degree, the pressure cooker of impossible attainment in Korea combined with the peer exposure to social media leads to unhappy outcomes. And that’s where "I Decided to Live as Me" really tries to help — and succeeds.

The author's honesty holds your attention. It’s easy to empathize as she describes her own shortcomings and vulnerabilities because they are our own as well. There is a focus on the present age, and how we are all experiencing it and are affected by it, and the ways that it makes us feel less than ourselves. When she tugs the strings of toxic memes we’ve all grown sick of, her articulation of what was false in their inspiration doesn’t just ring true — it rings right. Her methods to move past these impediments to our own development and fulfillment, whether it’s to live with other people, to avoid defeat at the hands of anxiety or to simply live a life that respects who we are, are divided into simple steps and presented as checklists. It makes it easier to see where your own neuroses and traumas lie, and what patterns you’ve formed to cope with them, while at the same time identifying your areas of personal strength or resiliency.

Kim’s charming and simple illustrations have a way of sticking with you. When recalling lessons from a text, it is easy to muddle different concepts and chapters. In particular, self-help heuristics can easily blend together, making the recollection of individual steps difficult. However, she combines each lesson with a specific single comic image and sentence that capture its sentiment. The images serve as effective anchors for recall of the content. The unconventional reading experience makes the individual lessons more memorable as well.

This book offers far more than just advice. It’s a great jumping-off point for deeper studies into a multitude of domains of human behavior, with examples ranging from Carl Jung’s concept of "the shadow" to Harvard University’s Grant Study, a longitudinal study of human development. Many sections connect the lesson to a specific psychological concept, study or researcher. I found myself using the references to dive into studies in cognitive psychology, explanations of Korean cultural nuances and other books that paved the way for this work. In a genre that often fails to give credit to other theorists and research, it was refreshing to see an author not only acknowledge the contribution made by those pioneers, but encourage the reader to learn more about them.

Self-help literature requires convincing arguments. Such works frequently rely on the tired magic words and phrases such as "actually," "in fact," "really," "in reality" and "in truth." These persuasive terms are powerful, as demonstrated by their use in politics and advertising, but it becomes grating to see them used in subjective or unsure contexts. Impressively, Kim abstains from their use. Working in tandem with the author’s down-to-earth anecdotes and researched examples, the novel’s language saves certainty for facts while making clear when offering opinions or feelings. The results are effective, though this may be due in part to accomplished translator Anton Hur, who has done an excellent job in maintaining the spirit of the writing which made the original Korean version a bestseller.

A reader told me their favorite quote was, “Don’t be swayed by what others say,” but a review of any product is designed to do just that. I enjoyed this book. I feel I learned something, and it encouraged me to learn more and live better. If you take a look for yourself, please forgive the effort to persuade — I think you’ll find "I Decided to Live as Me" to be worth the read.

The book is available through Tongbang Books. Visit dbbooks.co.kr to order a copy.

Arlo Matisz is an economics professor at Chosun University in Gwangju.