[One Thousand Characters a Day] Insight into Beauty 'Easy Beauty' <2>

Editor's NoteChloe Cooper Jones, the author of , says that as a woman?not a 'disabled woman'?she feels liberated simply by thinking about beauty, whether external or internal. Following the author's journey through the Borghese Gallery in Rome, Beyonc?'s concert hall in Milan, and the Killing Fields in Phnom Penh, all centered around the keyword 'beauty,' readers can intimately witness the author's psychological transformation and the redefinition of relationships with others. Encountering the author's beautiful and metaphorical sentences, which borrow from philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Iris Murdoch, embedded in her reflections during her travels, readers can also savor profound literary essence. Word count: 875.

People felt uncomfortable around me and sometimes treated me cruelly, but mostly they just found it easier to leave me on the sidelines because including me was difficult. My body was always visible, but what I called my 'self' was invisible. To prevent that inevitable situation, I preemptively excluded myself. Before being pushed out of a more realistic life?a life sparkling from all directions, bright, full, and inaccessible?I retreated to my own solitary place.

My father created a wonderful scaffold using travel, adventure, theory, philosophy, and art as materials to wrap theories about the self. He used that to protect, separate, and elevate the self. I did the same and convinced myself that being separated from others was better for me. Some part of that was true, but I couldn't distinguish between the true and untrue parts. I fell in love with philosophers who taught how to create grand theories about sacred solitude. I was a disciple of Plotinus. I was a holon being, someone who did not blend with others, who was apart from others, and who resolved to discover my complete existence. I escaped contamination through beauty. Through beauty, I became free from reality and became alone. The ancient Greeks taught to aspire to Sophrosyne. Sophrosyne refers to a state of harmony achieved between reason and wisdom. Plotinus argued that to acquire Sophrosyne, one must block all bodily stimuli, both pain and pleasure. The body is unclean and worthless, and beauty is discovered when we escape the body. "The purified soul is an intellectual idea and reason completely free from the body. Only in this divine order do the sources of beauty and all kinds of beauty arise."

- Chloe Cooper Jones, , translated by An Jin-yi, Hankyoreh Publishing, 25,000 KRW