I. I Give You

A gesture toward what cannot be kept

This is in tribute to Borges, and also to that period of my life when I groped forward alone in the dark, and to my fragmented, hesitant youth.

I give you the silent air, the crimson moon, the pale violet sky.

I give you the kind of feeling that can only be found in the deepest solitude of despair.

I give you the wisdom of my father that I could never reach. His presence, elusive and distant, is like yours: in childhood he was bitter; in youth he carried a destructive fire, a fire that also burned himself. Even now, he is unwilling to go gentle into that good night. He breaks through the white mist, and his rigid shell becomes alive again.

I give you the quiet, flowing joy that words have brought me through countless nights, and the tenderness and dreams that remain forever out of my reach.

I give you a courage that a timid and fearful person has never possessed, and the trust of someone who has never truly been affirmed.

I cannot preserve who I am for you. I fall into that dark abyss, struggle upward from the mire, and cannot simply laugh off every sharp and bitter mockery. There is no calm detachment — only a blade suspended over the heart, stained in crimson.

I give you a memory from childhood: the fragrance of a wintersweet blossom on a snowy day.

I give you the most honest understanding of life, a theory of the inner world: after passing through layers of illusion, after emptiness upon emptiness, one glimpses the secret deep within enlightenment.

I give you my hypocrisy, my darkness, my sense of not belonging. I so wish that this very alienation could move you. I try, in the most humble way, to reach you.

I drift between nearness and distance. I linger between bitterness and sweetness. Sunlight passes through the air; I breathe greedily — oxygen and carbon dioxide alike.

What can I use to keep you — 
my youth?

II. I Want You

A movement toward what cannot be held

The evening belongs to me. It gives me the classroom I can only possess in dreams. The wind passing through the corridor carries away the day’s sorrow. It is a night of endless romance without words, granting me the right to waste time.

The classroom is abandoned, yet occupied. In that abandoned space, it may have always been another classroom within a dream. Here, all stories rise into the sky, and all language sinks into the ground. No violent flame burns away all the oxygen.

Fragments float in the night. A cold scent returns. Passing acquaintances, broken souls, dreams wrapped in cobwebs. My intensity feels out of place; my stubbornness seems worthless.

Within this undercurrent, I come to understand you.

Between noise and stillness, between dead trees and neon lights, between scraps of paper and the tip of a pen, between haze and ambiguity, between fire and the grave — young people are unwilling to walk calmly toward death.

I forget my words. I begin to look at you with another kind of gaze.

On the worn staircase, a few ants keep me company. On the dusty air conditioner in the distance, there are traces of a bird’s nest. Familiar, yet endlessly repetitive. Through cedar trees, through thin mist, the sun brings its first ray of light. But soon the air grows heavy, and water no longer flows. Everything is both strange and familiar.

An unreal longing takes hold of me. An untouchable light falls into the lonely corners of my being.

Your cries in the heavy night, your wavering hesitation, your stubborn longing again and again, your fractured beauty.

I hand you over to time.
I will eventually lose you.

I speak of you to an old man in retirement, I speak of you to a wandering child, I whisper of you to the distant mountains and drifting clouds.

You are destined for a life of confusion, step by step, uncertain.

I want you. I want your day-after-day longing. I want your stubborn devotion to a higher spirit. I want the strength within you that cannot be destroyed.

What can I use to keep you?

One late-night conversation has stayed with me longer than I expected.

The topic was simple: should fairy tales always end with justice prevailing?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Many of us grow up hearing the same reassuring phrase: justice ultimately triumphs over evil. The idea carries the weight of moral certainty, almost like a law of history.

Yet the more I thought about it, the less certain it seemed.

Perhaps justice does prevail in the long arc of history. But when we narrow our focus to a single event, or a single story, outcomes rarely feel inevitable. Real life unfolds through a complex mixture of causes, circumstances, and chance. Sometimes justice wins. Sometimes it does not.

So why must fairy tales insist that it always does?

Two Meanings of “Justice Must Win”

During that conversation, someone pointed out a subtle distinction.

The phrase justice must win can actually mean two very different things.

One interpretation is normative. In this sense, fairy tales should let justice triumph because such endings help shape children’s moral understanding.

The other interpretation is descriptive. It suggests that justice inevitably prevails in reality, regardless of circumstance.

These two ideas may sound similar, but they belong to different categories. One concerns the purpose of storytelling and education; the other claims something about how the world actually works.

Experience gives us little reason to believe the second claim.

A Mathematical Analogy

At one point, the discussion drifted unexpectedly into mathematics.

Imagine, someone suggested, that injustice in the world behaves like a function whose value gradually decreases over time. Observing that downward trend, we might assume the function will eventually approach zero.

But mathematics teaches a useful caution:
a decreasing function does not necessarily reach zero.

Some functions decline but converge toward a constant. They approach a limit without ever eliminating the quantity entirely.

If we borrow this metaphor for history, perhaps the world moves gradually toward greater justice without guaranteeing that every individual event ends in moral victory.

Trends exist. But local outcomes may still vary.

Do Fairy Tales Need Happy Endings?

If fairy tales exist primarily to transmit values, another question arises.

Must those values be demonstrated through the ending of a story?

Perhaps not.

Stories can communicate moral ideas through the process of events rather than their final outcome. A narrative may show characters resisting injustice, supporting one another, and confronting wrongdoing. Even if the ending is ambiguous or tragic, the story can still convey that justice is worth pursuing.

In fact, binding justice too tightly to victory may create an illusion — that moral correctness guarantees success.

Reality rarely operates so neatly.

Encouragement Beyond Stories

Fairy tales are often treated as powerful moral tools. But in everyday life, encouragement often comes from much simpler sources.

A brief affirmation.
A thoughtful response.
A small moment of recognition.

These ordinary interactions may influence people more deeply than any narrative conclusion.

The Ethics of Response

One realization that gradually emerged for me concerns the small dynamics of everyday communication.

In modern life, much of our interaction takes the form of brief messages — short greetings, questions, or expressions of goodwill. They may appear trivial, yet even these gestures often require a degree of initiative and vulnerability.

Reaching out to another person always carries uncertainty.

Will the message be welcomed?
Will it be ignored?
Will it seem awkward?

In contrast, responding requires comparatively little effort. Yet responses — or their absence — can shape how people experience connection.

What appears to be a minor exchange may carry more significance than we assume.

A Smaller Kind of Justice

If grand ideas of justice belong to history, institutions, and political struggles, there may also be a quieter form of justice embedded in daily life.

It appears in ordinary acts of consideration: acknowledging another person’s effort to connect, responding with patience, or treating small gestures with sincerity.

These actions rarely resemble the dramatic victories described in fairy tales. Yet they form the texture of everyday ethics.

Perhaps the real question is not whether justice always wins in stories.

Perhaps the more meaningful question is whether, in our ordinary interactions with others, we choose to practice a little more understanding and care.

Socrates once said that the highest task of philosophy is simple: know yourself.

For a long time, I thought I already understood myself well. I imagined that I had looked inward as clearly as an eagle looking down from the sky. Yet life has a way of surprising us. Again and again, it reveals parts of ourselves we never expected.

Solitude

I have always felt that I am someone who needs solitude. Without a space to be alone, something inside me seems to fracture.

There is a quiet beauty in solitude. Many thinkers and writers throughout history have sought it — retreating from noise and distraction in order to understand life more deeply.

I especially love long nights.

Darkness slowly spreads across the sky, but traces of light still linger. Sitting quietly by the window, I watch the occasional car pass by outside. The trees stand still, as if time itself has paused around them. Even the wind seems careful not to disturb the silence.

Sometimes I imagine that people are like stars scattered across the universe. Vast distances separate us, yet in rare moments we look up and recognize each other. That brief moment of connection feels almost miraculous.

Many thoughts are born in such quiet moments.
For some, night represents fear and uncertainty.
But for those who reflect, it can feel like the calm just before dawn.

Music

Music has always been a kind of remedy for me.

Whenever I feel restless or overwhelmed, I often turn to composers like Chopin or Schubert. The sound of the piano feels warm, almost like sunlight touching water. Gradually, the turbulence inside settles.

The violin gives me a different feeling. If the piano reminds me of something soft and fragile, the violin carries a kind of purity and dignity. It creates an emotion that is difficult to explain — as if my thoughts and the melody are moving on the same frequency. I can only describe that feeling as being deeply moved.

I am also a nostalgic person.

Certain folk songs, especially those with the atmosphere of small towns or countryside roads, bring back memories of earlier years. Those days when we were growing up — stumbling forward, shedding childishness little by little — now seem both distant and vivid.

I still remember the time before my high school entrance exam. My friends and I encouraged one another constantly. We promised we would stay together forever, that we would attend the same school and never drift apart.

Later, on quiet afternoons when sunlight slipped into my room, I would sit on my bed and flip through my graduation book filled with classmates’ signatures. Sometimes I would even laugh quietly to myself, remembering familiar jokes or seeing someone’s youthful handwriting.

But some people and moments cannot be revisited.

The happiness of those years now seems frozen in photographs.

Perhaps that is simply part of life. People meet and separate, just as the moon waxes and wanes. Some individuals are meant only to pass briefly through our lives.

Still, I hope that somewhere in memory, we never truly forget each other.

Memory is like a bank that stores our most precious treasures. Time may move forward, but certain smiles remain untouched by it.

Growth

Joy is one of the forces that keeps people moving forward.

Often, it arrives unexpectedly — like a sudden spring rain or a flower opening quietly in the morning.

To reach those moments of clarity, we sometimes spend hours thinking, struggling, or even suffering. Yet when confusion finally clears and everything begins to make sense, the happiness that follows erases much of the exhaustion.

Thinking alone can feel like being a general standing against an entire army. But the challenge itself is part of the journey.

I have never wanted to remain fixed at a single point in life. I would rather face challenges directly.

Of course, I have also been afraid.

I still remember the first time I gave a speech in front of many people. I had been chosen to speak as a student representative about managing study time effectively.

As I walked onto the stage, I was extremely nervous. The speech I held in my hands had already been folded and unfolded so many times that it looked worn. I tried to appear calm, but I barely dared to look at the audience.

Everything I had practiced — the pauses, the emphasis — disappeared from my mind.

Yet when the applause came at the end, I realized something important had changed. I had stepped beyond a boundary that once frightened me.

Perhaps growth often happens in moments exactly like that.

I do not know how bright the future will be. But I hope I can keep moving forward, carrying the encouragement of the people who once believed in me.

Faith in the Future

I try to hold a quiet sense of faith in life.

There are times when we fall from great heights into messy, difficult circumstances. At those moments, it is easy to doubt ourselves. But even then, I want to believe that the future will eventually give each of us a fair answer.

Writing has often been a way for me to speak honestly with myself. On blank pages, I place thoughts and emotions that I cannot easily say aloud.

People sometimes joke that when humans start thinking too much, even God might laugh. But I prefer another idea: that we each have the ability to shape our own destiny.

Ernest Hemingway once wrote that before conquering the world, a person must first conquer themselves.

Understanding oneself is not something that happens once. It is a lifelong process.

So from time to time, I return to my own thoughts and examine them carefully. I try to remove what is artificial and unnecessary, until what remains is simple and honest — almost like the innocence of a newborn.

Perhaps that is when we come closest to truly knowing ourselves.

I once asked myself:
What color am I?

Not in a decorative sense.
Not in the way you pick a favorite color.

But if my life had a base tone — what would it be?

On a Friday evening, sitting on the subway after another long workday, the air felt silver-gray. The metallic hum of the train, the reflection of fluorescent light on the windows — everything carried a muted stillness. It felt like a color. It made me want to write.

I began wondering whether some people are born with a quiet affinity for a certain color — as if their inner frequency vibrates in harmony with it. I have always felt drawn to blue.

But which blue?

Is it the pale blue of the sky — mixed with faint lavender haze — soft clouds floating like cotton, harmless and gentle, something you instinctively look up to with reverence? There is a kind of humility in the act of looking upward. You don’t point at the sky. You simply look.

For years I would look at the sky without consciously naming its color. It was less about blue and more about the feeling — a quiet signal I couldn’t explain. Calm. Spacious. Distant yet intimate.

Or is it the deep blue of the sea?

Not just the sea — but water itself. Flowing or still. Joyful or grieving. Water carries life, but also memory. In its movement, something always settles. Within endless change, something constant is quietly born.

Is my base color melancholic?

Some say the underlying tone of life is sorrow. Is mine blue because it carries that softness of sadness? Light blue feels too bright, too exposed. Pale blue feels distant. Teal feels cold. Deep navy feels overly rational — almost dry. Blue-violet belongs to dreamers — am I that romantic?

Perhaps my base color is not pure blue at all.

Perhaps it is gray-blue.

A shade that can hold contradiction.
A shade that can say: I may not love my present circumstances, but I can learn to live within them.
A shade that accepts discomfort without dramatizing it.

Gray is often misunderstood as lifeless. But I no longer believe pale colors lack strength. Perhaps I am what I once called an “optimistic pessimist.” Or maybe just someone learning.

If gray is the ground, then blue is my protection.

Blue does not feel cold to me. It feels expansive. Green, on the other hand, has always unsettled me when isolated — too sharp, too aggressive. Yet blended with earth, it becomes vitality. White feels pure and distant, warm but untouchable.

When I paint, I begin to understand these relationships.