A few weeks back, Sarah and I watched the Korean film No Other Choice, directed by Park Chan-wook. Watching films together has become one of the small but meaningful ways we’ve continued “dating” through this phase of our marriage (and quietly squeezing the most out of membership at the Alamo theatre down the street.)

I have thought about this movie everyday since and it is has affected me in a way similar to the song “Inútil,” performed by Carlos Gómez in In the Heights.

“I will not
Be the reason that my family can’t succeed
I will do
What it takes
They’ll have everything they need
Or all my work All my life Everything I’ve sacrificed will have been useless”

No Other Choice follows Mansu (Lee Byung-hun), a man who believed his life was settled until it suddenly wasn’t. He’s laid off without warning, and the quiet stability he built, his work, his home, his sense of usefulness, begins to slip. What follows is his desperate effort to protect his wife, his children, and the life he worked hard to secure.

One detail from the film stayed with me more than I expected: Mansu’s greenhouse.

Full of bonsai trees and carefully shaped plants representing his years of care here at this one place that he built himself. Yet it was slipping away if he couldn’t provide financially.

At the center of the family’s property stands an old crape myrtle, its twisted, muscular trunk embodying both struggle and endurance. Park Chan-wook described it as mirroring Mansu himself.

Not long after watching the film, I brought home a houseplant. Then another.

Now my piano has become a small forest: a ZZ plant, pothos vines, ivy, a spider plant. Beginner plants, all of them. I’ve spent the last few weeks potting, pruning, and learning when not to intervene. Plants don’t reward urgency or speed. They grow on their own terms.

Most mornings I drink my coffee and stand there quietly. Sometimes my kids are playing. Sometimes my wife is at the piano. The plants sit nearby, doing their slow work.

It’s a modest hobby, but it feels grounded.

Steve Macias Anglican Priest and Classical Educator

Reformed Episcopal Priest. Rector at Saint Paul’s & Headmaster at Canterbury School.

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