[One Thousand Characters a Day] Person, Your Flower Language Is Loneliness <5>

Editor's NoteWe are so unfamiliar with spending time facing ourselves outside the fence of relationships that even the feeling of loneliness is named through relationships. However, isn't "discovery" sometimes the unfamiliar backside of familiar things? Loneliness is a time to return as a single "personality," not as a component supporting a structure, and a time of discovery to look back at the self alienated from relationships with unfamiliarity. Today's transcribed sentence from "One Thousand Characters a Day for Ten Thousand Steps a Day" is excerpted from the new book People, Your Flower Language Is Loneliness by essayist and writing instructor Dong-Young Lee. The text contains 456 characters.

Loving myself is not that grand. It is a way of behavior that focuses more on me, on my heart. In the small life called daily life, we inevitably repeat the environment surrounding ourselves. It is difficult to break free. The subject called "I" does not end as an individual but is a product of relationships and encounters. The more so, one must firmly resist what makes them self-conscious and keeps shrinking. Being able to love myself is proven by the decision to move away from the shackles of others.

There are people who even evade fate. What is needed here is only love. If I repeatedly allow myself to be hurt by others, that is never love. Only when I constantly hold and embrace myself can love be complete. Whether you agree or not, I will say this firmly.

Life is all about love. The rest are just fragments.

Let us engrave deeply the truth that the first task in life is to love myself.

- Dong-Young Lee, People, Your Flower Language Is Loneliness, illustrated by Seul-A Lee, Daban, 16,800 KRW