Part One

I can’t remember a time in my life, even in my furthest childhood memory, when I was not depressive. For many who live with that condition, the absence of hope is woven into our very being. Most people with whom I interact, including those I hold closest, do not know, or at least don’t know how deep this runs inside me, or how long it has done so. There’s even a bit of hope in that: It suggests that it’s possible to have meaningful relationships, to get done what needs doing in everyday life, to smile and laugh and participate, even when you feel pretty much hopeless.

I’ve read a lot about hope, the concept, the feeling, how to “achieve” it. I’m no wishful thinker searching for the magic spell that makes all suffering vanish instantaneously or offers guarantees against its return. That is exactly why, as I head into life’s closing chapter, I have an intense urge to grasp what hope is and how it works. Getting older, losing friends and family as their lives, too, come to a close, can’t help but remind us that whatever we need to do, it has to be now. I need to believe that hope is possible, and life doesn’t mean just “getting through” and “waiting it out” and taking comfort in not letting on.

Reading ancient philosophies, modern philosophies, and trendy self-help missives, adopting strategies like journalling and meditation and nature walks and dog-petting, helping those in need, and signing up for plenty of expensive therapy, are all helpful. For a time. I still feel I need something that makes sense of hope—hopefulness might be a better word—to keep me from shrugging off the persistent sense that it’s not enough. Which ultimately means that I’m not “enough.”

One perspective that can be found in any number of spiritual traditions sees life as a fine balance between hope and despair. This resonates with me because it doesn’t purport that life can or should be all sunshine all the time, just buy this, take this, wear that, do whatever. To me, that approach helps the way an over-the-counter analgesic relieves a headache; it can’t do anything for a brain tumour. And the unstintingly sunny smiley-face approach ignores the fact that darkness, despair, and death are regular, ordinary parts of life, not unusual, rare tragic events for which there is a quick cure. They are also necessary for personal growth, even if avoiding them were possible. Anything pretending otherwise is a denial of reality and not a healthy coping mechanism. This is a view particularly embedded in modern North American society, which also has the highest consumption rate of anti-depressants and painkillers in the world.

As a historian, these societal facts are not new to me, but they have recently been brought home to me in a rather unusual way. This is where the “K-Drama” in the title comes into this story. For those unversed in the genre, “K-Drama” refers to series made in Korea for Korean television and streaming services. I don’t know the language, and, except for a few interesting bits I’ve picked up, not much about the nation’s history and culture, past or present. Nor did any sage advise me to “turn on Netflix and watch K-drama; that will do the trick.” I would have dismissed that idea out of hand, anyway, because although I have streaming services and countless cable channels like most twenty-first-century humans, entire days go by that I don’t even turn on my set. The cable and streaming are mostly for my grandkids.

On a recent summer’s eve, the sun shone magnificently, my dogs snoozed on the deck, and I could hear neighbours cheerily enjoying themselves in their own backyards. I was too tired to read (my usual escape), too tired to write (my usual work). or to walk my dogs, or to garden, or to do mindlessly therapeutic housework. But not tired enough to just go to bed.

This is the bane of depression—the emotional exhaustion that fuels insomnia. I turned on the television. Nothing in the 500-channel cable-verse appealed. The mere prospect of having to choose something to watch was itself too much for my frazzled neurons. The streaming services presented even more decisions at a moment when much more pressing life decisions were flooding my hours. I found a surprising number and variety of Korean shows on the roster, some described as romantic comedies, others as “melodrama,” historical drama, fantasy-comedy, fantasy-melodrama, and fantasy-history. I opted for fantasy. Maybe it was the need to concentrate on reading the often-baffling English subtitles while watching the actors and following the often equally baffling plot, but I soon found myself watching a few episodes in succession. After several hours in front of the TV, already a drastic change in my habits, I felt relaxed. Relieved. Able to sleep.