171 DAYS OF BTS

There are a lot of things in my life that I’ve waited for and will continue to do so because I must (as an able-bodied functioning member of society). That long-awaited weekend, an anniversary, birthday celebrations, the holidays, a vacation. The end of a particularly draining week.

Then, there are things I wait for because I really, really, rrrreaaalllyyyyyyy want them.

That, ladies and gents, is BTS.

On March 20, 2026, BTS released ARIRANG. It is their highly anticipated comeback album after being on hiatus for four years. (All the members had to fulfill their mandatory military service in Korea) Somewhere between anticipating new music from a group I admire and realizing I could actually see them live, I started counting the days.

There were 171 of them.

One hundred seventy-one human mornings of getting into the car, heading to work or somewhere, and pressing “play.”

My husband, who is definitely not an ARMY (the name of the BTS fandom), became an extremely supportive participant – albeit involuntarily LOL – in my countdown. Every morning (or afternoon, or night), BTS came along for every commute. For the full 171 days, he pressed play on Spotify, and BTS’ Arirang album playlist blared on repeat from our car (and home) speakers. He listened to songs he probably did not understand, from a group he could not tell the members apart, and even participated enthusiastically in all my stories and trivia about them.

Eventually, this became our routine.  And somewhere along the way, I realized that the story wasn’t really just about a concert.

It was about the waiting.

It was about work. The day-to-day hustle of getting up, getting dressed, braving LA traffic, DTLA grit and grime, customer demands, meeting all the impossible deadlines (that makes me believe in miracles, truly) and all the other things that make up my life.

It was about love. Not just the love I have for a group of seven (7) men who call themselves BTS and whose music has found me when I needed them most. But the quieter kind of love that looks like someone getting in the car every morning and letting you listen to BTS over and over and over like a never ending Merry Go Round.

It was also about remembering… or maybe realizing is more apt, that there has to be something more to life aside from just doing all the necessary things we do.

Isn’t it fitting then that ARIRANG, the title of their latest album, is a Korean traditional song that talks about a journey – of hardship, of resilience, and of longing and hope. Because isn’t that what most of us are doing? Choosing to move forward even when we are tired and stressed, choosing to believe that eventually we will get to that place we all long for.

For 171 days, I had a very specific place in mind.

But the funny thing about waiting for something is that sometimes the waiting becomes part of the experience. The car rides became our own little Mikrokosmos – our own universe between home and work, where BTS played in the background and two people started their day together. 

These mornings may be ordinary in the scheme of life, but they became meaningful because they were ours. 

Then came the day of the concert. After 171 days of anticipation (and the stress of thinking of what to wear!), and now the waiting is finally over.

And suddenly there we were. Inside SoFi Stadium filled with thousands of people who had also waited (and battled the deadly ticketing wars), hoped and counted down. The man running with red smoke came on stage, the music started and the screams of the crowd reached levels unheard of. And for two hours and a half of our lives, the outside world ceased to exist.

It felt a little like stepping into a Magic Shop. A place where the things you’ve been carrying – the stress, the exhaustion, the responsibilities, the deadlines, the anxiety of living in this crazy world – could be replaced, if only for a moment, with music, amazing memories and so, so much tears inducing joy and disbelief.

And standing there with my husband beside me, I let it all sink in. All those mornings in the car.  All the waiting. All that working (to be able to afford these tickets, man). All those mornings where his love for me was so big, he let me listen to BTS day in and out on repeat.  All those ordinary days that led us to this extraordinary one.

Spring Day (which made me ugly cry during the concert when they played this as one of the surprise songs) reminds me that waiting is not always bad. Because in the waiting, healing and renewal could happen. And we look forward to that day when it does.

And so we wait. We work. We keep on going.

And then, when we get lucky, we get a moment that reminds us why we do it. For me, that came after 171 days, with BTS on stage and my husband beside me. The person who made the waiting bearable (and fun and creative and all sorts of good things). And with it also comes a sense of relief that our marriage survived 171 days of BTS mornings in the car. ☺

I am writing this article with post BTS concert depression (yes, this phenomenon is indeed true), and on my way to work this morning, as I looked at my husband driving, I will always keep to heart what those 171 days were really teaching me: