Kyung-mi Kim / Incheon Court Investigation Officer for Boys
Kyung-mi Kim is a professional juvenile investigator at the Incheon District Court. She investigates and consults youths who come to the court due to school violence and theft, and eventually makes a statement to the judge. She started the job in 2002 helps young people take the path of change through counseling and psychiatric treatment, if necessary. She “cleans her mind” every day because she has to be positive and comfortable in her own heart to truly help the children. Here is her story.
It hurts to see the children crying out to the world
A while ago, I met a middle school girl. She was a student who cursed at her teachers and ran away from home. The first words to come out from this child were curses. She was verbally abusive, so I couldn’t talk to her. I thought the girl needed some rest, so we met again three weeks later. It turned out that she was a wounded child. She had to see her parents fight every day during their divorce, and then after the divorce she lived with her mother who was always out working. In addition, she was bullied. In the process, the child learned to win by swearing. That’s why whenever she felt cornered, she started cursing.
When I told her, “I’m sorry about your situation, but you’ll be sent to the facility because you’ve done something wrong,” she cried. She asked,”Why should I be the only one to go? The kids who left me out don’t have to, my parents who fought all the time, the teachers who didn’t understand me, don’t have to. But why should I be the only one who goes?”
It hurt me so much to see the kid crying out to the world. I said, “I don’t know your parents, the kids who bullied you, or your teachers. But you are the one before me, and you are the one I can help. We’ll definitely get better if we work together.”
Most of the children who come here come from bad home environments For them, the world is just a place of fear with no one to trust. I would have felt helpless and sad if it had been “me” from before. But now I says this, “The world is a good place. It’s only the world you’ve been through that isn’t. You’ll see how warm and nice the world is when you change. Let’s try together.”
Listening to the story wasn’t easy, and I felt the limits of my capabilities and my mind capacity
I am able to say this with confidence now because I went to the meditation center every day and stayed. In fact, counselors have to constantly heal themselves. Otherwise, we can’t give people positive energy. Because we need to meet many negative-minded people, their thoughts continue to influence us even after they have left.
And while I’ve been throwing away my accumulated minds, I’ve always been able to deal with people with new energy. The most important thing to do when you’re looking at your kids is to listen carefully. Don’t judge. Just be like a mirror. Then children become bright and open just by you understanding them. Because they’ve never been understood in their lives, and they’ve only been scolded.
But, at first, it wasn’t easy to listen to it all. I liked to meet people and listen to them, so I majored in counseling. But even though I pretended to accept their words, I kept arguing with them in my mind. Very often, I felt the limits of my capabilities and my mindset.
The best way of healing your mind is through subtraction
Then I was in graduate school, and one day, my professor, a psychiatrist came to me with a very bright face and said, “I think subtraction meditation will be much faster than any other treatment.” And that’s why I started to meditate. In short, it’s a place where you look back on your life and subtract your feelings from it.
I cried a lot at first while going through the meditation practice. I thought I was right, and I was proud and selfish wanting to do what I wanted to do. I felt so ashamed of myself. Then, when I was in the fourth level, I became one with everything around me. I was one with the wind, one with the flying bird, and one with everyone around me.
Oh, I get it. Even though we were born as different entities, we live as one. I really felt that all the problems from my counseling sessions were resolved. I was very grateful.
Around that time, I also worked as an investigator in the court. It was hard at first. But most importantly, I was able to see the children who had committed the wrongs as they really were.
I wish we could all work together to take care of our children
Everyone thinks that they live on their own, but in fact, they live on the concept of what it was told to them. In particular, children are more affected by the environment than adults because their lives are short. Children whose parents have fought, been bullied and experienced such things believe that that’s all they have. That’s why they make the wrong choices in that moment. What can I do? I just help them change going forward. So I say to them,
“People always make choices, and all these years you’ve made choices that hurt you and others, too. But now let’s make a different choice.”
They change when you give them counseling, when you put them in the other person’s shoes, or when you help them look back on their lives from a slightly different perspective. The time I am happiest about what I’m doing is when parents or teachers call me later to say, “This child’s eyes have changed since he went to court.” As the saying goes, “Let spring come to the frozen ground.” The warmth of a person who accepts everything melts any heart.
In the cases of these youth, there are a lot of people, the judges and lawyers, who sincerely work for the children. It’s very kind of them and I feel grateful to them.
In the old days, people all used to say “our kids” and the passersby scolded and complimented the kids as though they were their own children. I hope there will be a world where everyone takes care of “our children” with one big heart and discards the minds that only me and my child will do well. For the sake of seeing that kind of world unfold, I will be more diligent first.
Source: www.meditationlife.org
