By Eugene Kim
Have you ever read the book The Curious Case of Benjamin Button? Even if you haven't read it, you've probably heard the name once. A child named Benjamin is born an old man at the age of 80, and gradually becomes younger. His life is a misfortune itself.
Humans are old because they are finite beings. To grow old is to mature and to mature is to grow old. Born as a baby, we spend our childhood and socialize for the first time. For the first time, I meet someone who is not my family, and I also start to learn the concepts of cooperation and competition at the same time. As we grow older, we take responsibility, and we struggle all kinds of ways not to fall behind in society. Then, when we become adults, we take advantage of the knowledge and cooperation we learned at school. Time flows, and we start to contribute one’s body to our society. On one beautiful day, we meet someone like fate. "Inyon" means that people, and people are connected by a string in Korean. A man has time for a definite connection. No matter how hard you try to break it, it continues, and no matter how hard you try to continue it, it breaks. So if you ignore the time and try to force “Inyon”, “Akyon” meaning negative karmic bond.
Isn't that ironic? Making a lifelong commitment to love with someone we don't know and giving a birth to a child. As we raise a child, we feel a lot of emotions that we couldn’t feel. Pride, true love, feeling it’s part of my body. The years go by so quickly that the child is in his 20s, and the mother and father retire from society. At last you get freedom, which is not freedom, and joy, which is not joy.
Their hands wither like flowers, waiting for the day to die in the cold wind. That is the unchanging truth. No matter how advanced science may be, one cannot avoid one's last destiny. In other words, it is both nature's providence and truth. But we humans fail to accept that fate and try to slow them down by taking advantage of the power of science. We can't send someone so much into our life and hope... Is it? No, because he's part of my life. As they leave, we suddenly feel a sense of skepticism that we didn't raise, and regret and regret returns as a sword to ourselves.
I recently read briefly about a book written by a nun working at a hospice hospital. Most of the most memorable things are that the old regret their lives before they die. As I have adjusted my choices to others, distrust and consideration of my choices have been a drag on them. Of course, human beings regret as they get older, but those regrets should decrease because we become "mature." Are we, or am I living a selfish life for myself? Then you don't have to be afraid of your one’s destiny.