K-Drama: One day at a time, forever

I just finished re-watching The King: Eternal Monarch (TKEM). One has to pause to say that Lee Min-ho and Kim Go-eun are mesmerizing as individuals and as a powerful partnership. OK, that out of the way, what I asked myself was, "Given that K-drama is all metaphor, what was this really about?" There are deep threads throughout, helping us think about fate and destiny, both about the paths our lives take. I am giving a talk as a "model scholar," which has caused me think about my own life and work. Influenced by TKEM, I would have to acknowledge how overdetermined my work has been by the set of family, community and world issues into which I was born. 

Yet the path is also determined by the steps we take, and in that regard, we can choose to accept our destiny -- we can work with circumstance. In TKEM, the lovers can only have a long-distance relationship. They commit to this, and adopt the strategy that they will live one day at a time, forever.  They fill their time together with small dreams and adventures, so that every day is what it can be. They part without dramatics. Michael Lally, faced with a difficult situation, will always suggest, "Don't make a big deal about it." This is useful because it helps the brain move on from the intense experience. 

We are in a situation that has some of that tension. A note from Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster puts our larger situation in context:

Less than a decade ago there was a virulent debate on the left on the question of “catastrophism.” A number of influential socialist thinkers, including friends of ours, charged Monthly Review with having exaggerated the dangers to humanity arising from the accelerating planetary ecological crisis induced by capitalism. Fast-forward a few years to the present, in which we are increasingly confronted in our daily lives with a chain of catastrophes, including record heat waves, persistent droughts, out-of-control wildfires, megastorms, unprecedented floods, torrential rainfall, glacier melts, and sea level rise, combining in myriads of ways to threaten every region and ecosystem on earth—with the prospect that under present conditions this will only get worse. The COVID-19 pandemic, meanwhile, has alerted the world to the dangers of the spread of zoonotic diseases across the globe, resulting from the economic destruction of critical ecosystems and the interface of this with agribusiness monocultures and global commodity chains.

We are in a long-distance relationship with peace and tranquility. So the question becomes, "What's there to be GLAD about?" It's a good question, and so thoughtful of TKEM to be so concrete about finding joy in circumstances that might defeat one.  More to follow on this question!