A Teardrop on His Cheek

The Teardrop

Eun Soo wept and a single teardrop fell on Choi Yong’s cheek.  As small as it was, a mere teardrop was powerful enough, magical even, in setting off changes that went far and deep.    It broke the ice and shattered the lake which was Choi Yong himself.  The teardrop was  the catalyst of Choi Yong’s awakening and sets the changes into motion.   It interrupted Choi Yong’s dormant state, in which he had been for seven years.  The delicate moment this precious teardrop touched Choi Yong’s cheek was symbolic of the pivotal point of change.  Choi Yong was awakened from the his sleep.     His awakening is a symbolic change at many levels:

• from dream like state to consciousness, lost and found the purpose in life
• from the dead to the living, physically and figuratively, having found the reason to live
• from seven years of perpetual consistency and constant familiarity to chaos and the unpredictable
• from the freezingly cold, bleak and lonely world of ice, himself personifying the frozen lake of  eternal nothingness back to a warm, vivid and colourful life with Eun Soo with new hope and desires
• from being unable to love or be loved to finding love

Tears are also a symbolic means of mediation between persons (living or dead), between an individual and society, between the inner world and the outer world, and so forth.  (T. Gale, “Encyclopedia of Religion”, 2005)   Here, Eun Soo, in dropping that tear on Choi Yong’s cheek as she wept, mediated the differences between them, negotiated for his life from the dead, and finally made the connection between the two states of being, bringing him from the inner dying world where he was trapped or had confined himself back to the outer world and back to life.  Her teardrop transgressed the world of the dead and despair and opened up passage for Choi Yong to return to the world of the living and love.

The teardrop is a natural symbol of pity, sorrow and suffering. The offer she made in this negotiation between the living and the dead was a piece of herself from her heart – the single precious teardrop that came from within her which she could only have when she felt Choi Yong’s sorrow and had pity on him for his suffering.  When she wept that tear, she was also changed.  The teardrop in this case was also symbolic of the sacrifice that she was ready to make for this man later on in the story.  It is also symbolic of the sacrifice she was ready to make in exchange for divine intervention through her prayers for this man’s life and safety.

The teardrop is a sad, beautiful and endearing symbol.  The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore described the Taj Mahal as “a teardrop on the cheek of eternity“.  In Chinese folklore, a girl who loved a man was heart broken, and she transformed herself so as to fly into his heart to see for herself the reason why he could not return the same feelings though he loved her.  When she saw the answer she has sought in his heart, she became even more heart broken, and she wept a teardrop in his heart before she left which panged him mercilessly without end whenever he was reminded of his love and regret for her.

(Have you listened to “Teardrop” by Younha from Faith OST part 4?)