Korea is a drinking-tolerant society enough to be called a drinking republic. On the other hand, the harm caused by alcohol is very serious. Violent crimes by drunken people increase and alcoholics are produced. Peaceful families and societies often fall apart. For the healing of individuals, families, and society suffering from alcohol, the national alcohol and alcohol-free policy is urgently requested. Sul has the face of Janus. I present this novel with a heart that must always be vigilant.
Episode 18 Doban
I went into the pork belly restaurant and unwrapped the black plastic bag while Doban placed his order. Then, I poured the leftover makgeolli into a glass of water and drank it in one shot. I felt the blood rushing to my face once more. Soon following, the table was served, and the five-piece pork belly came up to the table, boasting a majestic figure.
“hello.”
While the grilled meat was being cut with scissors to make it easy to eat, a senior woman at the pub entered with her daughter. The lady with her graceful figure was slow-wielding, and her young daughter never took her eyes off her phone to see what she was doing. Her daughter was pounding the phone with her fingers while she ate the meat that her mother provided for her.
“Sulchin is in the world, and Doban is a person who has gone to church. In other words, the drunkard drinks alcohol while complacent with reality, and the doban transcends reality.
I finished drinking makgeolli and started craving soju.
“Eat a lot. Worked until this morning. I made some money.”
Doban poured me a full amount of alcohol and said, I continued to say, trying to be sorry once more.
“The fact that I broke school with you is proof that we were drinking friends. Drinking friends are supposed to be polite to each other. Of course, since we are friends before drinking friends, a certain degree of rudeness will be tolerated in the name of friendship. But if that goes too far, they fall for each other and eventually turn their backs on each other.”
“You, too, have gone too far when I see you. But when did I ever blame it?”
A sense of relief was oozing from Doban’s face. It was proof that my eyes were correct. With a happy smile, I bumped into Doban and a glass of wine.
“A drunkard is simply a drinker. It’s a stage where you just treat alcohol and drinking in a flat manner. I see it as a phenomenon. Behind the scenes, they don’t know what’s on the upper floors, they don’t even try to find out, they just drink because they like alcohol. So, if my drunkard gets drunk and shouts at me, the film cuts off, and annoys me, I don’t want to see it in the first place. Because drunken friends are in a different dimension. So Geji is a person who has to drink alcohol in a gentlemanly manner. You have to drink gently to be treated like a person.”
“Yeah, now the drunkard knows what it is, so please explain it to me.”
“It’s Doban. I’m sure you’ve noticed it a while ago when I was explaining drunkenness, but it’s the complete opposite. He’s the one who brought alcohol to the heights of the Tao.”
“Then am I a thief?”
“I don’t know if it’s a Tao, but in any case, it’s that alcohol is not just a drinking stage, but rather a stage of meditation.”
“You used to be a drunkard, then you became a gangster? Anyway, play with it and put it in its place.”
The senior wife and daughter of the pub ordered soybean paste stew and got up from their seats. The daughter chugged out the dining room door first, and the tavern-senior lady greeted her politely and then slowly walked out of the dining room with her dignified gait.
“I don’t have any money, but do you even bring meals for your seniors?”
“Anyway, I called to call my senior, but if it doesn’t work, I’ll have to call my family and treat me to it.”
I was concerned that Doban’s expenses would increase in the seat with me, but Doban answered with a friendly smile. I once once more took pride in my eyes.
“There’s a reason I upgraded you from Sulchin to Doban.”
“What?”
“First of all, it’s because I started to think of drinking as a stage of meditation, and that’s when I started seeing you. Before that, in other words, if I had been drunk, I would never have understood you… .”
“What happened?”
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that you were embarrassed because of alcohol, but you still can’t throw away your alcohol. This is the last time I saw it.”
“There’s nothing else that I can’t stop drinking. It’s because I don’t have a head of opinion.”
“It cannot be explained simply by not having a head of opinion. I’m going to ask a question, so answer it seriously.”
At my words, the Doban was taken aback and changed his posture and sat down.
“Why are you drinking?”
“Why are you drinking?”
Dovan took the glass to his mouth and thought deeply.
“I think I may be drinking because there is alcohol.”
“It reminds me of a climber who said that there is a mountain there, so he climbs it.”
“I parodied it a little bit.”
Doban raised his right index finger and squinted his eyes.
“Alcohol, as you know, gives pleasure in the first place, but then causes pain. The pain caused by alcohol is wide and deep, both physically and mentally, at home and at work, and even under economic pressure.”
“right.”
“Nevertheless, that is what a doban looks like when he drinks alcohol once more and enters the penance himself.”
“Depending on how you look, you might look like an alcoholic rather than a meditator?”
“The distance between the drunkard and the alcoholic is actually not even a span.”
I poured the glass of wine into my mouth and continued. Doban filled the glass with an interesting expression.
“There is a book called ‘The Birth of Personality’ by British psychologist Daniel Nettle. There, the author divided the human personality into five categories: extroversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, affinity, and openness. What I’m talking regarding is openness, which is sometimes called ‘culturalism’, ‘intelligence’ or ‘openness to experience’, and it is also related to originality and artistry. People with high openness are poets and groups of artists. They are able to communicate freely because different areas of recognition are open, which means that they have a wide range of recognition and association abilities. There is also a spiritual side to openness, a supernatural belief. So, not only poets are very open-minded, but also shamans and shamans. They have a wide range of associations, have regular auditory hallucinations, have unusual beliefs, and have reached the point of contact to the extent that they feel they have been connected to the central computer of the universe. And open-minded people are constantly resisting norms and conventions. What do you think. Most of the people who do literature and art are not good at adapting to the system.”
ⓒWriter Park Tae-gapgreatop@hanmail.net
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