I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

In any case, I tend to go back and forth between romanticism and cynicism. Crossing those barriers between hot and cold, I forget the lukewarm boredom of life; that lukewarm state is what I fear the most. Unable to return to feeling hot or cold, to be numb within a state of room temperature. In that state, we’re nothing better than dead.

Togetherness means altruism, and altruism is what saves us from selfishness. Because it begins with me and ends with everyone.

In the end, a better way to live is to live among others, something

If I don’t plant the seed in myself, it will never grow.

Because we exist in a space only briefly, and then we disappear.

It’s no use to hold on to the empty shell of a love that’s past, to try to win back a heart that will never return, or to let your regrets eat you up from the inside . . .

Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too.

But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance.

But just as a person who is dropped into a dark well must make a circle in order to determine they are inside a well, I am sure my continued attempts to be better will take shape into something resembling an octagon, or even a dodecahedron, and maybe one day a circle.

When we’re sinking in water, it can be a relief to feel the ground beneath our feet, the rock bottom, because we know we can kick against it to rise again. But if you can’t feel the ground in life, the fear can be overwhelming. So maybe it’s good to find your rock bottom.