The place where I used to dwell was a rustic countryside, but around my high school or college years, a basketball hoop was mounted onto the wall of a storehouse, enabling me to play. It was my father who had installed it for me. It was hardly a spacious ground for basketball, but since the path saw barely a few passersby throughout the entire day, playing there posed no major issue. However, engaging in a game with two or more players (not that there was anyone to play with to begin with) or practicing three-point shots was verging on the impossible.
Thanks to that, I faced no difficulty practicing basketball even at home. I primarily rehearsed free throws, dribbling, and simple skills. Launching countless layups and free throws, I was dreaming a dream within my mind. A dream that one day, in a place far removed from this countryside, I would joyfully play basketball with friends just as I had in the past. Furthermore, it served as a sanctuary to untangle endless agonies. This was particularly true during the period I was forging AirDesk, as there was not a soul to encounter all day long. At least once a day, I made it a point to head outside to take a stroll or bounce the ball to pass the time. It felt like my solitary escape hatch.
Looking back from the present, it seems I passed through a truly astonishing stretch of time. Back then, I was thoroughly wretched, yet on the other hand, I was enduring a time that felt entirely natural. A mindset resided within me, dictating: "To become the person I intend to be, to become the figure I dream of, this degree of hardship is only natural," while simultaneously, I was intensely lonely and tormented. Destitute of financial capability, I possessed no freedom to execute anything, and it was utterly bleak not knowing how long I must pursue this endless labor. I existed within a strange paradox—harboring hope, while concurrently harboring despair. Hope and despair were like two sides of a single coin. They invariably traveled together.
Amidst that journey, I experienced several moments that stripped the doubt away from my life. When I concluded that sustaining AirDesk any further was untenable, I exposed myself to the market, and as a consequence, I came to recognize the true caliber of the individual I was. Naturally, because the me of that era had lived fighting solely against himself, cooperating with others or managing unfamiliar systems must have been at the level of a mere novice entering society. My competence was deficient, and it remained ambiguous in what direction my life would advance. The startup I selected was precarious. Does a future truly reside here? I had no choice but to ponder this frequently.
After relocating to Yangjae-dong, what I executed most frequently was taking walks. I intensely desired to play basketball, but the courts were crowded with a multitude of people, and I could not easily integrate myself among them. Moreover, the height of the basketball hoop at my countryside home where I practiced was low and close; but naturally, actual basketball hoops are higher, requiring one to shoot from a greater distance. That close and wide hoop of mine had merely been convenient for playing solitary games. If anything, it felt as though it had solidified my skills in an erroneous direction.
Gratefully, Yangjae-dong abounds with premium places to take a stroll. Walking along the Yangjaecheon stream is splendid, and crossing the grand boulevard to visit the Citizen's Forest is equally excellent. I primarily walked Yangjaecheon; it served as my commuting route, and I favored the fact that it was a place where people were present whenever I walked. It seems I craved the presence of human beings. Perhaps it was because I had existed as though entirely severed from society for a long duration. Trudging along Yangjaecheon in that manner, I dreamed of diverse futures. I envisioned visions regarding the multiple products I was forging at the time, and I sketched what my visage would look like should I achieve success. Yet throughout that vast expanse of time, though I had entered a wider world, I felt as though I still led a narrow, thin existence. Even in Yangjae-dong, the places I frequented were entirely fixed, and almost none of my relationships were sustained.
Intriguingly, these days I am passing my time in the most tranquil manner of my entire existence. To be precise, I am spending my days without initiating contact with anyone—absolutely anyone. Yet this is far from meaning that I lack people to contact. Individuals I could encounter at any given moment reside everywhere, but like a cat that rolls about all day long before drifting into slumber, I pass my own time, spending the day precisely in the manner I desire. Since when was it that I became so desensitized to this species of indifference and severance?
That turning point was unequivocally within the recent few years. No, to be precise, it must have been within the recent few months. No, to be even more precise, it was within the past single month. Through the knowledge amassed over several years, I was able to cast aside all doubt regarding my livelihood, my intellect, and my competence. Traversing the past few years, I experienced both the triumphs and collapses of enterprise, coming to contemplate what truly carries weight in existence. And lastly, through the span of this past month, I realized that I never required that many people to begin with, and that even the relationships existing as mere slender threads with them were utterly devoid of meaning. Consequently, I closed every window. Closing every window tight, I left wide open only a select few windows through which those holding a genuine interest in me could observe: precisely this Brunch account I have maintained for over ten years, and YouTube.
To me, the world has become a manageable place. To be precise, that the world is manageable does not signify that living has become easy. The exact expression would be that I have secured the absolute certainty that, at least for the next few years, the world will be manageable for me. And depending upon how I utilize these few years, I believe the world may appear manageable until the moment I perish, or it could conversely transform into an object of terror.
If there were a cake representing the world, I feel as though I have plunged a blade deep into its core, drawing it back out to taste its absolute substance. Within it, a squalor akin to sewage and a sweetness akin to a gift from angels were thoroughly blended. It was a shambles where women possessing soft flesh, individuals who favored me for no explicit reason, pathetic losers, and degraded, vile dregs of humanity were all intricately entangled.
Once the courage to turn myself off from this world at any moment was forged, in reality, very few terrors remained. A human being is that breed of entity. If you remain indifferent to how you are remembered by the masses, if you harbor no terror toward your own demise, you can truly become an individual who transcends absolute imagination. While I cannot declare complete agreement with two specific questions, if I must select between "strongly agree" and "strongly disagree" regarding them, I am living my life far closer to "strongly agree." Death is merely death, and being remembered carries no great weight. Absolutely all of this felt like a singular show. All the things I struggled to aggressively seize are, in truth, nothing more than deciding how to spend the fleeting, transient moment of remaining alive. Only when one remains alive does that even carry meaning. To a human being who rejects remaining alive, the meaning possessed by every reality in this world is utterly forfeited.
Ultimately, I have become a person who holds no particular need to harbor doubt regarding my own life, my own visage, or absolutely anything I once questioned. The doubt or anxiety regarding my future. My thoughts regarding the divine. Death, and whatever lies beyond it. Indeed. Thoroughly astonishingly, I have become a free man. Though bound to the world, I have become an individual liberated from it; though a free man, I am merely lingering here for the time being. To use a metaphor, it is akin to becoming a convict who can break out of prison at any given moment, yet chooses not to escape. I have become a prepared individual who can jailbreak from the prison known as the world at any second, while concurrently transforming into a well-adapted human capable of living splendidly even within its walls.
In that regard, I am blessed. The apparatus sustaining my life is neither my cardiac rhythm nor my physical health. It is the love of my father and my mother. Had it not been for that, I suspect I would have departed this world long ago. The reason I am lingering in this place is because the legacy of my father's and mother's love remains. Therefore, no matter how harsh a childhood I endured, I no longer resent my parents. The reason is not that they never inflicted wounds upon me, but because they strove to love me in their own distinct manner. They simply had never learned the method to express it gently or deliver warm tenderness, and were thus inept at it; yet through their lives, they labored to leave behind a legacy of love, and to me, this became my heart—the solitary reason preventing me from departing this world.
I have realized that whether I am dubbed an evil man or a righteous man, or whether I receive zero attention from anyone, it carries absolutely no consequence. Because even that evaluation is entirely void of meaning. Those who render the evaluations will also depart this world someday, and vanishing from the memory of every individual who judged me will occur with extreme celerity. No matter how grand the love an individual received, being swiftly forgotten is the absolute rule of this world. The span one can linger beneath the radiant, brilliant light numbers a mere pittance at best.
Therefore, I am laboring to locate that which I desire to find. Though people claim to live for the sake of happiness or amusement in traversing this world, I possess something I wish to unearth during my remaining time. There is something I absolutely must behold at least once. I am living for the sake of that. I could simply choose to perish, but would it not set my mind far more at peace to depart after locating what I wish to behold and what I desire to find? It seems this species of human desire refuses to vanish entirely. If possible, I wish to actually behold what I have dreamed of. If I do so, perhaps around that moment, I might also discover another meaning of life that I had hitherto failed to locate. Such is the thought I hold.