Issue No. 69

In the last two weeks, I have been extremely stressed from work, family issues, social and relationship issues, and a lack of progress on my goals. I was not able to work out at all during this period. My sleep was disrupted; I would go to bed around 3 or 4 am and wake up at 8 am without breakfast. I started eating poorly again. My room became a mess. I was drinking only 1L of water a day, so I was dehydrated. Because I was dehydrated, I had headaches. Because I had headaches, I couldn't work properly. Because I couldn't work properly, I couldn't make good progress on anything else.

My life is like this sometimes. After a long period of steadiness and stability, I fall into a very melancholic mood. I start questioning my life even more. Where am I going? What progress have I made? Why do I do all these things? For whom? When is it going to end? I wake up, I eat, I work, I go back home, I take some trips, I meet people, I go back home, I sleep, I wake up, and I do the same thing. It can be so repetitive. Even though I know I am in a privileged position—I have a stable job, a home, enough money to help my family and survive in Korea, and the ability to travel whenever I want—I still feel trapped by my own set of rules.

I have realized I am creating a prison of my own. When I temporarily removed myself from my routine, I saw just how much I had been pressuring myself to do better. It is not wrong to want that. I think we all should strive to be better. Even 1% every day is enough. But these last two weeks of a depressive episode taught me something when one morning during the weekend I decided to go out without my phone, watch, or AirPods. Just me, on my own, walking on the street.

I started seeing the trees I had only seen peripherally because I would look at my phone sometimes as I walked. I started seeing the expressions of people—whether they were frustrated, sad, or happy. Maybe it was because of the warm weather, but most were frowning that day. I started noticing my strides, how fast I walked. I learned this from Koreans, I guess. I used to walk slowly. Because I had no idea what time it was, I did not bother to hurry. Because I had no destination in mind, I was not looking for direction. I just let myself wander around the neighborhood.

I felt some lightness in my body and asked myself, “Is this living?” Before I started the walk, I thought I would feel bored, empty, or unproductive. What I felt was something else. I felt full of life. I was able to appreciate the small things I had not been paying attention to—the world around me, the people around me, the purity of life that presents itself to me, to my senses, and to my mind.

And then it hit me. I am punishing myself. I have lived a life full of expectations from my parents that I internalized and expected for myself too. I've always emphasized in my letters the need to become a better person, but I forgot that in order to afford the sanity to be a better person, I first need to see myself as one—a person, not a machine.

I have learned that there will be times when I will be sad, stressed, or depressed. But in the end, I know I will be stronger, wiser, and more passionate about life.

When a problem arises, our natural reaction is to solve it immediately. While emergencies require immediate action, most situations do not. Our minds are faster than events, so we want to fix things as soon as possible. Let them unfold. See what happens first, and then act. Don't solve things as they happen because they may resolve themselves anyway. You don't always have to participate. You can be an observer first, a participant second.

This reminds me of a Japanese philosophy called wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is a worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection.

Wabi involves appreciating the beauty found in modest simplicity. It encourages us to open our hearts and let go of materialistic desires, allowing us to experience spiritual abundance.

Sabi focuses on the passage of time and how everything grows, ages, and decays, revealing beauty in this process. It suggests that true beauty lies beneath the surface, even in what appears to be broken.

This means accepting that the world is not perfect and should not be. If the world were perfect, there would be nothing to learn, nothing to change. Life would not exist. The existence of the universe is predicated on the existence of unbalanced forces. Imperfection must exist for movement to occur. A river flows because of a difference in elevation and gravitational pull from its source to its end. If these elements were equal, the river would not flow. It would be stagnant. The fish in it would eventually suffocate due to lack of oxygen, algal blooms would devour its pristine color, pollutants would accumulate, killing all microscopic life, and the sharp increase in temperature would eventually cause it to evaporate.

Our lives are the same. If we were born perfect, with the innate ability to succeed in everything we do, not needing to learn or move, it would not be living but mere existence without life. We must accept the things that happen to us before we can make a difference in them. Let life unfold in front of your eyes, and then do your duty to act.

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Until next week,