Vegetarian

I usually didn’t read novels much, especially Korean novels, but since last year I’ve been reading them little by little based on recommendations. Among them, the author I liked best was Eun-young Choi, and as a reader, what was appealing was vividly discovering the hidden structures embedded in human relationships and society. I felt a sense of catharsis, and it seems like these were novels that made me keenly aware of things I hadn’t usually paid attention to.

Upon hearing the news that Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature, I read her novel The Vegetarian, and I liked it just as much. I wonder if it’s like a spicier version of Eun-young Choi’s novels. Living in Korea, there are social rules that one is naturally forced into and comes to conform to, and what left an impression on me was how these elements are laid bare through a somewhat unusual protagonist. The storyline is quite depressing and shocking, so at first I felt some resistance to it, but after actually reading it and reflecting on it carefully, it left a deep, lingering impression.

Since last year, I’ve been learning coaching, a way of speaking that helps other team members grow. In a coaching session, you have a 1:1 conversation with the person who requested the coaching and work together to solve a problem they’re usually struggling with, but if you’re not careful, it can easily turn into lecturing them or trying to change the other person into the shape you want them to be. No matter how much the company or organization has its own goals, I think one needs to recognize that they shouldn’t force changes that the other person doesn’t want. It’s not for nothing that the first principle of coaching is “Do No Harm” — not causing harm to the other person.