Korean idioms: chak shim sam il (short-lived resolutions)
If you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution and then struggled to keep it, then this idiom is for you. It describes me to a tee. Because I also suffer from chak-shim-sam-il.
作心三日 작심삼일 chak-shim-sam-il
作(MAKE) 心 (MIND) 三 (THREE) 日 (DAYS) = This expression describes the person who makes up their mind to do something but then gives up very quickly – literally after three days. I am this person. My life looks something like this:
There’s a similar expression in Japanese – 三日坊主 mi-ka-bou-zu which literally translates into ‘three days monk’ – it’s a cute image of someone working diligently at first to become a monk but then giving up after three days. Maybe it’s too much effort or they find something else that they ‘really want to do’ instead. Yes, that describes me perfectly.
So what is it that keeps some people totally focused on one thing?
And what is it that stops us others from doing that? I think I get side-tracked by other people.
Yes, I’m going to blame other people 🙂
I want what they have. I see someone who just ran a marathon and looks in great shape so I start jogging.
I see a sign for martial arts classes and sign up immediately..
I go to a Korean knotting jewellery exhibition and decide to join knotting classes. I mean, the list is endless.
CALLIGRAPHY
This is one of the reasons why I find people like my calligraphy teacher so intriguing.
My teacher has been a calligraphy artist and teacher for over 30 years. I envy the person who is single-minded, working towards one goal their whole life.
After 25 years in Asia I have dallied with calligraphy on and off FOR YEARS having classes with different teachers along the way. But since I am chak-shim-sam-il – I soon end up quitting or as I prefer to say, ‘taking a break’.
But I always come back to calligraphy. Every time I see some beautiful calligraphy on a book cover or at an exhibition I think about starting classes again. And every time I go to an event where guests have to sign their names in a book, I’m reminded how terrible my writing is and I think about starting calligraphy classes again.
CREATIVE HANGUL CLASS
Calligraphy isn’t popular with young people at all – it’s very slow, takes ages to learn properly, and isn’t considered useful since nobody writes letters by hand anymore.
I met one teacher who had changed her teaching style to try to get students more involved.
She was a hangul calligrapher and I met her at an exhibition and she wrote my name in hangul beautifully on her business card, explaining that she could only write a person’s name if she could see them in person! I was intrigued, and when she told me that she taught classes I immediately signed up. Obviously.
But the class was not what I expected.
First she told us that it takes YEARS to become any good at calligraphy – the teacher herself had been practising for over 20 years.
So rather than learning any actual writing skills, she wanted us to ‘have fun’ and ‘play around’ with the strokes in an arty way rather than learning traditional hangul.
This didn’t bode well. I mean, have fun? Play? No thank you! I’m a serious person…!?!
And even though I am a self-confessed sufferer of chak-shim-sam-il, I was still insulted 😉
AND as an English teacher, I also wondered what my adult Business English students would say if I stood in front of the class on the first day and said…
‘Hi everyone. Welcome to my class. Actually, It takes YEARS to become any good at speaking another language. So let’s not bother studying properly as you are never going to be any good anyway. Why don’t we just have a bit of fun instead!‘
Even if the teacher is thinking it, I don’t believe it’s a good idea to say it out loud!
Anyway, we started off practising a few vertical and horizontal strokes before quickly moving on to circles, squares, and zig-zags. The teacher explained as we painted our zig-zags that we could do them to look like mountains and then paint a circle in the middle for the sun.
This is when I started to get worried.
Why were we painting mountains and suns? Not hangul letters. Then we did circles all over the paper and had to colour them in with crayons.
Even though I went to art school, I was getting more uncomfortable now.
It took me back to how I felt at primary school when we were in the gym for P.E class and the teacher told us to ‘be a tree’ and ‘sway like a tree’. I wasn’t a tree. I didn’t feel like a tree. I just felt stupid.
Next we were told to write our names three times – once in hangul, once in Chinese characters (umm?) and once in English. And as we wrote our names we were supposed to ‘put our personality’ and ‘feelings’ into the characters.
I could only come up with childish shapes. I needed to learn some basic skills first and wanted a more traditional approach to the classes.
Yes, I’m guilty of chak-sim-sam-il but I still want to be taken seriously as though there is a chance that I could be good if I worked hard and stuck at it.
Perhaps this is just an illusion since the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour (according to Dr Phil). And if that’s the case it’s very likely that I will give up again. But there is also a chance that this time it will be different.
During the class, the teacher explained that she was frustrated with the way calligraphy is usually taught in Korea: students spend YEARS simply copying the teacher.
So they often give up before being given any creative freedom. So she wanted to change that.
That’s admirable, but in my case it was too extreme. The teacher was trying to get me to run before I could walk!
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