To Those Without Dreams

Not because simply wanting makes it happen,

but because that desire drives changes in your own behavior.

And it acts as a painkiller to ease the bitterness of repeated challenges and failures, and as an anti-inflammatory to prevent festering.

Current thoughts become wishes, become wants, and so change behavior, and that behavior changes a person's habits and life.

actually,

Up to this point, this has been for people who at least have dreams and goals.

But in life, how many people have no dreams at all...

It may be a little cowardly to write this, but

I have a dream..

So I don't truly know desperation.

But the whole world says, "Everyone has a dream, and everyone can achieve it. Then you too can be number one, first-class.."

and that reality is suffocating.

I have dreams, but I have no intention of being number one.

I just want to live harmoniously with people who dream such dreams.

I have no memory of being first.

I'm not that tenacious, not that proud, not that diligent.

But what I want to say to people without dreams is: don't try so hard to have dreams.

It's a way of saying don't let that frustrate you or shake your sense of self.

Maybe what I think and try to do isn't really fit to be called a dream either.

It is just not lying to myself, not compromising with conditions, and just finding what I like and doing it.

Because at those times I feel happiness? a sense of fulfillment? — I feel alive, and my chest pounds.

Because at those times I'm not jealous of people better than me, and when I see someone behind me I want to teach them and walk together.

Because, with time, the worries I heard at the start — 'at this age / at this point in life / in my situation / me?' —  ... 'is it really okay to do this?' —  

             I can look back on those worries and laugh them off. 

Because at those times, even if I fail, I don't think I'll regret it.

Don't try so hard to dream.

Just think about what you like, what you're curious about, what you find fun.

But I know it... my dear younger siblings, friends, and juniors told me.

that they don't know what they like 

that they have no curiosity about the world

that they have no interest in anything, that the world is just bland and dry...

And I say.

that's a lie.

"You're fibbing!"

It isn't that you don't have those things.

It's that you're running away.

It's that you're scared stiff and curled up in fear. 

I have had this kind of experience.

When I ran the cafe, every morning on the way in and every evening on the way out I'd practice smiling, going "ah-ee-oo-eh-oh" and "frog hind legs—".

Looking in the mirror, I'd say "yeah, I may be short and plain, but my expression is really kind ha ha ha",,,

But after closing the cafe, while supervising interior construction and doing design work 

while spending time alone or in solitude,

I couldn't keep practicing the smiling like that...

A few months later, when I came back down to Daejeon... one day, while laughing "hahaho" at a friend's joke,

for the first time, I felt that my face muscles were s.t.i.f.f.

That's the feeling.

That's the phenomenon.

The reason I can confidently

tell my dear younger siblings, friends, and juniors

"You're fibbing!"

is exactly this.

And I — and many others — already know this.

"It is not that we laugh because we are happy, but that we are happy because we laugh."

Of course I know it sounds soggy and saccharine. 

This too is a lie.

But what comes to mind when I hear this is

"if, when I am truly happy,,, finally laughing in gratitude after such a long time, I were to feel my face stiff again as I once did..."

"the moment I had waited and desperately longed for — how miserable and sad I would feel..."

— that is the thought.

 

 

 

So in the end,

It was rambling.

It always is.

And that is fine.

All I can offer are words like these.