[Voices of the MZ Generation Column] Is Your New Year's Wish Bread or a Lottery Ticket?

Bread Is Needed for Those Living Today
Instead of Dreaming of Winning the Lottery
Live Each Day with a Tangible Life

There are many interesting scenes in the globally trending Netflix drama "Squid Game 2." In particular, the first episode briefly shows the recruiter for Squid Game, Ttakji Man (played by Gong Yoo), meeting with homeless people. Although this is not a crucial part of the overall narrative, many viewers found this scene memorable. Ttakji Man, somewhat for fun, buys a lot of bread and lottery tickets and goes around asking the homeless to choose one. Most of the homeless choose the lottery tickets, which have almost no chance of winning, instead of the bread that would fill their stomachs.

In fact, they did not need the bread. Daily sustenance, that is, a single meal, is necessary for those who will use the energy gained to take action. Bread is needed by those who get up, navigate life, and do their work. They need calories to warm their bodies and keep their brains running. Bread serves as the fuel to burn and create today’s life for those people.

However, those who do not believe in the power of today do not need bread. Instead, they only need delusions that will instantly change their lives. They just need fantasies about hitting the jackpot that will change their lives by simply sitting or lying down and scratching. Recently, our society has been flooded with sweet talk promising easy money if you just listen to certain words. But that is not about creating life. It is about scattering life into the void again, and merely abandoning life in a daydream.

Life, essentially, might be about aiming for daily sustenance. Doing what needs to be done means completing today’s work and earning today’s sustenance. We must not forget this daily cycle. Everything depends on the things of the day. Daily work, daily love, daily exercise?these daily things ultimately build a life as solid as the earth, not the void.

Perhaps there are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in this "day" and those who do not. Some believe that if they solve a workbook every day, they will eventually achieve success in their studies; if they exercise every day, they will eventually have a remarkably healthy body; if they write every day, those writings will eventually become a book. On the other hand, some people, surrounded by cynicism, skepticism, and resignation, lose trust in the days. The former choose bread, and the latter choose lottery tickets.

Life may not require grand delusions or great passion. Rather, without passion, fantasies, or great hopes, it might be enough just to have the strength to get up from your seat every day, pick up a piece of bread, and start your work. There is the mindset of a working person in the world, and conversely, the mindset of someone dreaming of winning the lottery. I want to be someone with a working mindset, who does not hesitate to complete the day’s work, and who makes each day a tangible life.

Believing in a body whose limbs move and a mind that can see the world clearly, I hope to be someone who can carry on day by day. What is needed is not a grandiose dream like winning the lottery, but a mind that does not need to dream of that. A mind that can take today’s steps?may the days of the new year be filled with those. When 365 days are filled like that, it will have created a better life than the days wasted dreaming of 36.5 billion.

Jung Ji-woo, Cultural Critic & Lawyer