Embracing Poignant Stories Within

📖 Maeumsajeon (Dictionary of the Mind) by Kim Soyeon

A few years ago, a colleague told me about a book they found so touching they gifted it to someone. That book was Maeumsajeon. At the time, I just thought it was a soft, easy-to-read collection of essays, so I didn’t pay much attention. Recently, while browsing the library shelves, I discovered this book. Upon reading it, I found it to be a collection of writings more abstruse, difficult, and unique than I expected. The process of taking ordinary words and giving them new life by infusing them with the author’s experiences and insights was quite refreshing. Come to think of it, we all have our own “dictionaries of the mind.” For instance, just as the single word “love” is defined differently by each of us. A word that someone else might simply let pass by comes to me with tenderness, adding meaning and being recorded in my heart. Suddenly, I wonder what words make up my own dictionary of the mind.

📝 Thoughts and Sentences I Liked

pg.45

Emotions can be named because they are specific, but moods and feelings cannot be named. If an emotion is a single room, a mood is an entire house, and a feeling can be said to be an entire city. Emotions react, moods combine those reactions, and feelings encompass those moods.

pg.58

We often lose what is precious due to the weight of what is important. We constantly struggle between important commitments and precious commitments, ultimately leaning towards the important ones.

pg.145

In children’s fairy tales, phrases like ‘The day cleared up as if by magic,’ and ‘I recovered completely as if by magic’ appear frequently. We find it hard to believe in the best moments, and so we preface those moments with the modifier ‘as if by magic.’ How wonderful would it be if we could say of the world we live in, and of the people we meet, ‘It was beautiful as if by magic.’

pg.163

Love is a single point. It does not exist continuously like a line or a plane, but only in fleeting moments. The very instant we confess ‘I love you’ to another, love evaporates and is gone. In the moment we hear such a confession, as we gaze into the deep, shy eyes of the person speaking those words, blinking a few times in between, the essence of love vanishes like smoke into a distant myth. Love is merely a fleeting moment that emits the most powerful magnetic field.

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A prerequisite for the beginning of love is ‘mistake.’ We may call that mistake ‘destiny’ or ‘inevitability,’ but it is merely an accidental error. The first step of a mistake ignites love. That mistake is later glorified into something most special, most wise, most inevitable. The power of glorification itself is the power of love.

pg.190

When one falls in love, selfishness finally gains someone to love it, but self-love gains one more person to love.

pg.197

Nowhere does truth exist in its entirety. Truth is always edited and constructed by the people involved with it. To be edited and constructed means it is no longer truth. We sometimes cling to objective facts, wanting to make objective judgments. In the process of pursuing truth, truth itself does not exist. Because truth only speaks of what is visible, it might seem possible to achieve objectivity that overcomes differences in perspective, but this is not the case. Just as this mug I’m holding appears as a round circle when viewed from above, but a rectangle when viewed from the side, truth always misses the complete form.

pg.238

After a breakup, the destination is home. You are going home as always, but now you are on a completely different path. The lights that once encircled both your heads are gone, and even the bowed streetlights, which seemed to nod in agreement with your love, now appear to hang their heads in dejection. Inside the home you return to, the waiting objects are there, holding deeply moving stories within. You place your body inside that house and lie down. As if lying in a coffin. The point where home can become a coffin. That is where you arrive.

pg.284

There was a time when I didn’t know myself well, a time when I deliberately muddled and mixed up the self I wished to be with the self I wanted to hide, afraid to know which was the real me. After confusingly crushing myself like that, I developed an intense interest in myself. That was a very long time ago.