What Time Is Yours?

Yang-hee's watch stopped at 3:30 p.m., but she still glances at it as if it were running. The stopped hands are neither a dead battery nor a fashion choice. She deliberately fixed the time at the hour of her birth.

The writer first knew Yang-hee as an unusually mature student, more than 20 years older than many classmates. Yang-hee asked not to receive special treatment and studied so hard that she ranked first in the department. Only later did the writer learn that she was a working mother with an elementary-school-aged daughter. She had returned to school after abandoning her studies because of an injury that ended her high-school career as a shooting athlete. At the same time, the small company she ran had become difficult enough to consider closing.

Yang-hee was born at 3:30 on a summer afternoon. During a period of despair in her 20s, she bought the watch and stopped it at that time. When life becomes unbearably difficult, she looks at the watch and then up at the sky. She remembers the child who first met the world at 3:30, someone who must have been the most special child in the universe at that moment. Thinking that there must have been a reason she had fought so hard to be born gives her strength.

The writer recalls having a special story too. Her mother used to say that, as a horse born in broad daylight, she was destined to work and keep moving without rest. During exhausting years as a television writer, she held on to that idea, imagining herself as a spirited afternoon horse. The explanation may have been fanciful, but it helped her accept her own struggle and endure it.

In Yang-hee's most difficult moments, the stopped watch lets her see herself not as a struggling business owner, older student, or tired working mother, but simply as a precious child who has arrived in the world. The writer suggests that life's special meaning may come less from recognition by others than from the stories people give themselves. She ends by asking readers whether they, too, have such a time.

“

My watch is always 3:30.