EXAMPLE PAGE - EBOOKS - THE PROMISE OF THE TEA GODS - Flipbook - Page 53
the promise of the tea-gods
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mistake. The best I can do—the best any of us can do—is to try not to
make the same mistake again.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong. Please don’t say that.”
“If I didn’t do anything wrong, you wouldn’t have deleted me from
your friends list. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that
out. Something, somehow, went terribly wrong. So, here are our
choices: You can blame me, or I can blame you, or we can both just let
it go.” Standing up and stepping off the low rock into the sand, she
added, “It’s a beautiful day. Walk with me?”
He slid off the rock and landed beside her. “I’d love to walk with
you, but please don’t turn things around like that. What you did was
send me a birthday card. What I did was delete it and you. What you did
was kind. What I did was heartless.”
They walked along the shore—K’s feet splashing through the swirling tide as it met the golden sand. She bent down and picked up a shell,
then turned it around in her hands. Finally, she said, “Perhaps this is our
time to learn about being ‘only human’ and to accept the things we do
that only humans do. We’re all just walking along a road, and what matters most is that we keep going—trusting that when we look back, every
misstep we’ve ever taken will have become a beautiful footprint we’ve
left upon the world.”
“That’s a very poetic way to look at things, but I never want to find
myself on the road of being only human. It’s a pathetic way to live.”
“No one walks a road they’ve already mastered. So if we’re on it,
there must be something to learn.”
“I seriously doubt that anyone learns anything from being only human. It’s just another lame excuse for being irresponsible. And if I don’t
take responsibility for my own bad choices—for any stupid decisions
I’ve made—then I’ll never improve.”
“It’s not about improving, Soo-kang. It’s about trusting that even our
missteps make us more.”
“I have no idea what that means.”
She looked at him as if she had a secret to tell. “Of course you don’t,”
she said gently.
