// records ·

累積之時間

Han SanghoonHan Sanghoon·Seoul·EN

There are many who take pleasure in classifying human beings into ranks. The vulgar human. The noble human. The human for whom it is natural to do menial chores. The human who naturally deserves preferential treatment. I find such individuals utterly loathsome. They are the ones whose rank is too low to even associate with me, and I have no desire to exchange words with them.

I am profoundly filled with an antipathy toward authority. This animosity toward authority has been refined and shaped through the countless fool-like adults I have encountered throughout my life. Those who put authority at the forefront were always generous to themselves, yet harsh toward others. They possessed no consistent standards. They spoke randomly and lived according to their whims. I regard the authority, the position, and the power they hold as nothing more than something merely passing by for a brief moment.

One of the proofs—or rather, a semblance of proof—of this is that those foolish adults who put their loathsome authority at the forefront have, without exception, proven their own stupidity as time progressed. In the Bible, there are the words of Jesus stating that a tree will be known by its fruit. Indeed. Humans prove themselves through time. What kind of tree it is can be discerned through the fruit that hangs upon it. It may bear abundant fruit, offering a plentiful and sweet harvest to animals and humans alike, or it may fail to bear a single fruit, becoming a shriveled, dead tree.

Time not only bears witness to a tree but also vindicates a human being; thus, one can discern a person's true nature through their accumulated time. If one were to divide humans into true ranks, it would be appropriate to judge them not by their bestowed authority, but by the traces of the time they have accumulated.

Some individuals engage in unwanted volunteer work merely to gain favor with people. Conversely, those who truly serve prove their sincerity through accumulated time—one year, two years, three years... By what is a human's yearning proven? It is proven by the time they have amassed. If someone claims to dream of success, yet no traces of the time accumulated for that success are visible; if there are no hardened hands, no marks left by a resolution carved over time, and no witnesses who observed it, how can he claim to have built up his purpose?

Ultimately, a human being is judged by their own time. What one loves is proven not by a heart growing hot or the like, but by the records, the actions, and the devotion made for the sake of that love. Simply shouting "I love you" in words, or clamoring "I love you" while merely carried away by emotion, is but a fleeting sentiment for that brief moment; true love is proven by ancient time.

How does one prove a parent's love? A parent warms and feeds the bottle to a suckling infant in a place where no one is watching, and cleanses the child with utmost care, whether they pass stool or urine. Why? Because they love, they devote themselves to the child even in unseen places, and willingly spend the money they have earned to raise and feed them. The living people themselves are the very evidence of love.

Some individuals claim that they were not loved by their parents. While that may certainly be the case for some, the vast majority of people survived to this day without dying in their infancy precisely because they received an immense amount of love from their parents—and even if they lacked parents or were abandoned, they were able to survive because there were those who fulfilled the parental role in their stead. No human being can cook their own meals at the age of one, earn money, and buy their own clothes.

There exist traces and reasons for everything we have survived to enjoy, yet arrogant individuals clamor and live as though they stand above those rules. If the future they will inevitably face is as clear as day, joining hands with them is no different from walking together into a fire pit that is glaringly obvious.

Everyone says that the future is unknowable. That is not true. Humans live, quite surprisingly, mostly within the predictable boundary of "that person will likely live that way," and they face a level of life, success, and failure that matches it. The evaluations of others based on accumulated time are incredibly accurate. Therefore, the next stretch of time to be faced by a human who has failed to prove themselves through accumulated time is highly likely to be wretched, following the course of inertia. I no longer wish to tolerate sharing my time with such individuals. Yes. It is time for me, too, to divide ranks. Between those individuals and those who are not.

▩ END · posted · 2025-09-20 · seoul
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