Feeling Dap-Dap Hae

Koreans have this thing that they do when they are feeling exasperated, exhausted, frustrated, misunderstood, confounded, anxious, oppressed, heavy... I list so many adjectives here because there is no good English translation for this word, but this thing that Koreans do, well, I think everyone should do it because it just makes so much sense. They "dap-dap" their chests.

And now you can do it, too. Just ball your right hand into a fist, making sure to keep your thumb on the side of your fist, rather than curled in front of your fingers. Now thump the left side of your chest just above your heart with your right hand in a quasi-King Kong-like manner. It's like you are thumping all of that, uh, stuff, right out of your body.

I have been doing a lot of this lately. Partly because I feel half heart-broken, half numb. Partly because every day I question my future with the GS more and more and wonder if I should just give up now. Or if in fact that my hopeless attitude and half-numb heart will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I have been doing this because I can't seem to make decisions about what I should do or where I should go when I'm finished with my teaching contract. I just feel stuck out there in emotional limbo.

And so I'm dap-dap hae. And Dap-daping on my chest feels like an apt expression of all that emotion that I'm not sure how to talk about.