Meditation of the Week: Dan Han
By AYAAN AKHTAR and CATHERINE WU
Q: What was the main focus of your meditation, and what inspired you?
A: The main idea of the meditation was a comparative analysis between The Giving Tree, the Bible, and the Aeneid. I essentially talked about these different books I read as I grew older and what they meant to me. It was all a way for me to talk about how the books I read are a reflection of the change in my life. I…saw all my older brothers leave home when I was very young, and I left home when I was very young as well…to come to Exeter. [My meditation talked about] how my relationship with my family has changed because of that and how at this point now, I feel like the primary and perhaps the only strong connection I have to my family is my heritage [and] growing up in church religiously. So even though I have struggled with my own faith, I’m putting in the effort to try to believe because it allows me to feel that connection to my family, whereas there would be none otherwise at this moment in my life at 18 years old.
Q: What is your relationship with literature, the Bible, and religion, and how did it play a role in the development of your mediation?
A: I grew up very Christian in a home — I thought the word “secular” was a bad word. My dad and my grandfather are pastors as well. My mother met my father as they served in missions overseas, then they ended up spending the last 20 years raising me and my two brothers in America, planting Korean churches all across the American heartland. So, [it was] a very, very religious home. Clearly, you gotta have a lot of faith to commit to that kind of life and travel to all sorts of countries to do that kind of thing and come to America.
“My first superheroes were not Batman — it was Gideon, Jonah, Joshua, or Moses. Those guys were my Superman. ”
The first worldly concept that I was introduced to and had most accessible was the Bible. My first superheroes were not Batman — it was Gideon, Jonah, Joshua, or Moses. Those guys were my Superman (then I realized they couldn’t fly, and it was kind of lame). My parents also believe — as many immigrants do, especially coming from a background that they were in — that education is the route to success or at least some sort of uprooting of the system. Not only was I introduced mostly to biblical literature, but also to literature in general.
And so I obviously tended towards the Christian themes and allegories that I could understand. Those have always been present, even at Exeter. Like you wouldn’t believe it, but having this background knowledge, I will tell you: reading Tony Morrison — there’s so much biblical knowledge that’s in there. I truly believe that the Bible is probably the only book that you ever read in your life until the 1800s, maybe — that’s the only thing accessible. I suppose all Western literature stems from the Bible, that’s why I was able to tie readings into my meditation.
Q: Tell me about the refrain [from your meditation] — “Bad things don’t exist” — and how it relates to your life and your mother.
A: So that’s a proverb in the Bible, and it was something my brother would always tell me. I’ve always had a lot of self-aggrandizement and romanticization of my struggle and, as a result, my ignorance. In that adolescence of ignorance, I harbored a lot of hate and resentment for my childhood and how I grew up in perhaps such a religious home and under such difficult circumstances, especially with my parents and their generational trauma and their backgrounds, which certainly flowed into the way I was raised in my childhood. I harbored a lot of resentment for that fact and the other fact that I was 14 years old and I got dropped off at Phillips Exeter Academy, even though it’s something that I wanted to do. I guess I didn’t really know what I was doing.
I have always felt like my life was full of these “bad” things, and then there are good things. I was always judging my life in a very mathematical sense: bad things plus good things equals… whatever. As I’ve grown older and started to see new understandings, and then the evolution of literature, I’ve noticed my longing for forgiveness and the beginning of me trying to comprehend the enormity of everything around me rather than just my own circumstance. Instead of resenting my life or bringing shame into that “equation,” I’d rather bring joy. This life is too short for us to be weighing things as good or bad — things just happen. We just bring joy.
“Instead of resenting my life or bringing shame into that “equation,” I’d rather bring joy. This life is too short for us to be weighing things as good or bad — things just happen. We just bring joy.”
Q: How has your experience at Exeter shaped this meditation?
A: My experience at Exeter has been one of feeling very alone and feeling like I wasn’t supposed to be here, especially when I don’t feel like the circumstances of my childhood prepared me to thrive at Exeter. I don’t believe that I was set up for success here. I do think that’s the case for a lot of the kids that don’t do well here — it’s not that they’re not smart, it might take them longer than others, but they end up finding ways to do well and thrive. Coming to Exeter was really lonely in that sense because I had to navigate all that without my parents. I was going through a lot of this emotional turmoil in my relationship with my parents because I was just young and had a lot of ignorance. In my Meditation, I talk a lot about the distance and the loneliness, and the kind of insecurity that was harbored there in that sense. Coming to Exeter is pretty integral for the changes I talked about in my life in my meditation.
Q: What do you want people to learn or take away from you after listening to your meditation?
A: I actually don’t care what you think of me about me from the mediation. You can think I’m a crazy radical Christian, [and that’s fair. But I mean, it was really just for me when I wrote it, so I can’t really tell what you would take away from it. For me, though, it was such a cathartic process to be able to document and dissect what I was learning and the kind of man I was beginning to become.
