New year came, but it doesn’t feel like a new year. Around this time of the year, it’s supposed to be noisy at the very least, I should be able to feel some movement around me even when I am keeping myself quiet, but it only feels tranquil around me.
And now it’s starting to feel like a new year after the large snow last night. The sudden snow made the traffic stop, and I hear the way to work the next morning was chaos, but I feel something warm and cozy.
The window wall in my study looks down on a terrace. Several houses over, a big tree is standing behind the sky. It is hundreds of years old and it is a clear indicator of the changes of the four seasons.
And it is now indicative of winter. Snow has piled on the tree. A nest is only visible in winter, and I can see birds flying over it.
Looking at it, the panorama of almost three years that I have suffered after the accident in early January of 2018 passes before me.
COVID-19 hadn’t sunk in with me, even though it has been dominating the entire world. Now that I am up and able to move around, I see that COVID-19 is still raging which I had thought would be gone after a month or two. I guess everyone has been suffering for over a year.
The dull, ordinary flow of days now comes to me as a blessing. I also think of the lyrics of a popular song 'What’s so great about living?'
It’s not a small deal that a pandemic, something which appears once in a while, visited us at this time. A lot of people in Korea have never experienced war or pandemic. This is the way that God sends us a reminder.
Come to think of it, the cacophony within humankind has always been existent, and battles for land have always been there and yet, a peaceful life always manages to find its way back eventually.
The world-renowned scholar Jane Goodall, known as 'the mother of chimpanzees' has warned each time there is a hurricane, earthquake, flood, fire, that we needed to change. But we haven’t. Now, she declares that 'humanity is finished if it fails to adapt after COVID-19'
As I am writing this, a fine huge gingko tree comes to my view via the window wall across me. The tree is watching over me. Birds fly over to the tre, and dozens of sparrows, sparrow hawks, magpies, pigeons flock over to my terrace for food.
'We have brought this on ourselves because of our absolute disrespect for animals and the environment' she said. 'Our disrespect for wild animals and our disrespect for farmed animals has created this situation where disease can spill over to infect human beings'
These birds are so clever, flying over to the close window even at my slightest approach. They are so small and so delicate. It has occurred to me to wonder where they might be living in this freezing cold, and I had thought of something else while feeding them.
I make up my mind to pay attention and be sweeter to the little creatures we co-exist with in this precious earth with a new attitude, looking at the birds flying over to the big tree, and magpies, sparrow hawks and sparrows approaching the window.
And I long for the bushy leaves of the branches – that are bound to come.
The good thing intrinsic to one’s native country makes it hard to leave the country even in crisis Hoyon Son
There might be tsunami landmine and war anywhere I cannot run anywhere Sunshine Lee | 
