Out of nowhere, I'm throwing myself the foolish question: "What do I live for?"
Maybe it's because I just came back from watching the musical Mephisto a little while ago.
Or maybe because, by chance last night, I came across some old blog posts of mine.
think normal... 044 (t. Don't dream. Passion alone gets you nowhere) _2010.10.21 09:01
think normal... 043 (t. Life as a human being) 2010.10.21 09:04
"What is this — did I write this?" The tone and content read like a late-twenties version of me who had lived through it all, talking down to the wobbly late-thirties me.
Unlike my awkward life up to my mid-twenties, my late twenties were perfectly clear about everything. "Go where you want. It's just one body to take responsibility for. If all you do is whine where you stand, you'll stay right there forever. You are the one who chooses." Posts from that fearless era — worth flipping past.
Time passed, and in the famous "around thirty," through the familiar "various circumstances," I became an office worker again. And in a completely different environment. The culture was different, the way to survive and the environment both changed. Relatively, compared to my past, my intellectual capacity has gone up, it seems — but the road ahead is endless and hollow. And just as the basic principle of economics is that a worker must receive wages less than the labor-value they create, there is always a thirst between one piece of labor and the next.
They say ignorance is bliss. Having once been a boss, now I end up worrying about them — without even knowing my own state. I just take what I'm given, with no sense of proportion. I wonder if this is how a servile mentality begins to sprout. It's not my company, and I'm not even an executive or a manager, yet I worry about things not meant for my seat and keep butting in with plans and proposals. It's all shouting into the void. Both sides — they didn't expect that of me. Every organization and society needs roles and responsibilities fitted to each seat. That's how a machine's gears turn smoothly. And when that mutual understanding and those roles accumulate, management can draw a better, bigger picture. And so I wander, looking for my own role.
Somewhere along the way, the thoughts that once shot up sky-high, the actions I used to push through without hesitation, the stances of reinterpreting problems from different angles to solve them — they've become hard to find in me. Only the small worries of daily life surround me like a thicket of thorns. Yes — small things have become big things. I'm timid, and that timidity grows megalomania. The shoot, of course, grows not into a flower but into more thornbush. If I stay still these thorns dig deeper into my skin; if I try to clear the thicket, they pierce self-inflicted wounds into the joints of my fingers and toes. Right — "maybe the small daily worries and their resolving are the very props that hold up today's me existentially." With that thought, I get through the day.
Yes, that was it. Ten-odd years ago, "What kind of glory did I choose this path for?" — that felt like the last? No, the first beginning. When my business started finding its feet, I began to worry about my family and the person I loved. I made a choice. "What you do isn't what matters — who you do it with is." I don't regret it even now. But right now, neither that "who" is beside me, nor am I doing that "what" properly.
"What do I do. Why do I do that thing, and how do I do it" — isn't that what makes a person, and what makes others come to understand and love them? As I write this post, I'm jotting down thoughts as they come. Perhaps that is how I lost my character, my content? Weren't there people — acquaintances — who came because of my content, and family who supported a me like that? Maybe, several years — no, ten-odd years ago — under the excuse of "for someone," didn't I run away from "what"?
Without plot or structure, just letting the thoughts flow, let me try to think about what kind of place that was, the place I ran to.
The era of dividing clothes into cheap, expensive, or good is over. What matters is where the clothes are — and who is with them. I wanted to build a space that was insanely light. I thought space and context were important. And context is created not by the manufacturer but by the community of people who come to that space. They throw parties, they perform, they study. They sometimes make their own goods. And they make and sell clothes in a style that matches their culture. Not this year's trending color or fashion show — clothes completed on top of a micro-trend generated in that insanely specific space by its people. That's how the space becomes a platform, and those who enter it become not just customers but network-mediators (say, 3rd parties) who are both supplier and consumer. A mediator, for the sake of the content or product they participate in and make, voluntarily connects their own network to the platform. To build such a space, I set it up as a café rather than a clothing store. Because in the old days a café was, long before a place for fresh and tasty coffee, a place that served as a network for social issues, philosophy, and art. — think normal
Of course, looking back now, it was clumsy. It wasn't the era of abundant personal cafés like today, and it wasn't the era when individuals or small teams ran their own brands, so I was able to receive an undeserved amount of attention from customers and people in the industry. Even rethinking it, those events were only possible thanks to a pure-stubborn attitude. The thinking was, "Let me fail properly, at least once." I was at an age with nothing to lose. Money? For that money, I converted a basement-level cheon-se apartment, painstakingly earned over 4–5 years as a young professional, into a monthly rental. With the 15 million won I scraped together this way, at the inner end of a small shopping arcade's corridor by the back gate of Daechi-dong's Eunma Apartments, without even a signboard, "that familiar café, Normalstory" was born.
Back then, the little ichi-go ichi-e moments I had left on the blog are what held me up. "Hey — what are you living for now? And how are you doing with that someone you chose over everything else?"
To those unfamiliar thoughts of mine from ten-odd years ago and their confident question, I, who began to shrink for a long while, at this late hour, ask the me of right now: "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where is that me going? And what does it even mean to "go somewhere"?"
Looking back at the writings Venerable Beop-jeong left us, I close today's ichi-go ichi-e (一期一會).
Ichi-go Ichi-e一期一會 / Venerable Beop-jeong
In the world of tea茶,
there is a phrase — ichi-go ichi-e一期一會.
It means: a connection you meet only once in a lifetime.
Even in the span of an individual life,
if we think that this moment with this person
is the one and only chance in our life,
we cannot help but spend each moment meaningfully.
If one thinks one can meet them any number of times,
it easily becomes ordinary, but if we think of this as
both the first and the last time,
we cannot let it pass carelessly.
Chances do not come around all the time.
Once missed, they are hard to undo.
The flower that bloomed today is not the flower that bloomed yesterday.
The me of today is not the me of yesterday.
The me of today is a new me.
Do not be confined to the old
and turn your back on the new time.
Step out of the narrow room of the past
and live as if you will not be here tomorrow.
We must know to be thankful
for the fact that we are alive right now.
Do not take this life for granted.
Ichi-go ichi-e一期一會
— a one-and-only chance, a one-and-only meeting.
To share this gratitude with the world,
we are living in this way.
Live by becoming life itself.
That is the way to avoid both misfortune and happiness.
We fear extinction because we see life as something we possess.
Life is not possession but being, moment by moment.
Live in the moment, and die in the moment.
The one who wishes to possess everything
must own nothing.
To have everything
one must have it without needing any of it.
Even if you have let go, let go of the notion that you have let go.
As a wind brushes past the branches of a tree
pass through like that.
We need margins of longing and regret in our lives.
Do not try to fill everything.
We see and hear too much,
we pour out too many unnecessary words.
It is like pollution of the soul.
Nothing good comes from having gained,
nothing to cower over from having lost.
Painful and hard things
have their own meaning in that time and place.
They are all for the moment.
When trials come before us, it is all for a reason.
If you know that meaning, you will not suffer.
Watch life unfold with a clear mind, moment by moment.
Then you will not be easily swept away by happiness or misfortune.
Time that has passed once does not return.
We must be able to receive it with gratitude in each moment.
The next is not promised.
Everything is ichi-go ichi-e一期一會.
Every moment is the one moment of a lifetime,
every meeting is the one connection of a lifetime.
How we live now determines the me that comes next.
Life — long and difficult,
yet the most fortunate path of practice given to a human,
and moment by moment we are shaping the us of the next life.
All of it — one-and-only in a lifetime,
nothing is eternal.
Bloom anew, moment by moment.
