Something about this picture (from CDT) struck me:

     They are a North Korean couple.  Apparently urban, fairly well-off: his suit suggests that he is a cadre with some job or link to the party-state apparatus.  But that is my guess.  It is just a picture, without context.  How shall we interpret it?

     I raise this because with North Korea we tend to assume the worst.  Obviously the government is a tyrannical mess.  But what about people there, moving through life and society, trying to live, survive.  Should we assume that they are all fully committed to the Kim Jong-Il dictatorship, or are many of them going through the motions externally, to avoid repression, while trying to maintain their humanity and dignity internally.

    Again, I have no idea who the people in this picture are, and I suspect no one else does either.  What caught my eye, however, was the bit of a smile on her face.  She seems to be reacting to something he is saying.  And I bet he is not whispering into her ear some quotation from the Dear Leader.  I imagine that this is a personal moment, something more deeply human than the pathetic pubic expressions of support for the regime.  And that is why I read it as optimistic: perhaps, for all of the political constraints, two young people can steal a moment on a park bench, speak personally to one another and cultivate their interior lives.   

     I would guess that they are married – sitting so close together, touching even, in public in North Korea would almost certainly not be done by couples not yet married, or not yet engaged in a formal manner.  But maybe I am mistaken.  Maybe they are neither married nor betrothed.  Maybe it is a moment of creative loving connection, the very start of a longer relationship.  Who knows.

     But why not assume humanity exists there, that people work hard to realize their moral selves in the care and cultivation of their closest loving relationships?  We should keep that in mind when talk of war and intervention is in the air. 

    I found a passage from Mencius that gets at what I am thinking: (this is from the Lau translation, p. 182):

Mencius said: "For a man to give full realization to his heart is for him to understand his own nature, and a man who knows his own nature will know Heaven.  By retaining his heart and nurturing his nature he is serving Heaven.  Whether he is going to die young or live to a ripe old age makes no difference to his steadfastness of purpose.  It is through awaiting whatever is to befall him with a perfected character that he stands firm on his proper destiny."

    Maybe that is what they are doing.  They are retaining their hearts; that is, searching inside themselves, deep in their consciences, to understand how to forge and maintain their closest social relationships; working from the inside out, from personal "heart," to family connection, to social position, to construct a moral life that will provide them with meaning and security, whatever fate might befall them.

     If you retain your heart you will know Heaven, you will know that whatever destiny unfolds, you have done the right thing by those closest to you and, therefore, yourself.   What matters is not what the Dear Leader says, or what the state demands, but what the "realized heart" creates.

     Maybe that is what they are doing.