Things that stop us

Zoroaster left behind so many aphorisms for us. One of them is to die at the right moment. Dying at the right moment means you die when you complete your mission in life. It’s the last prerequisite for a successful life. Likewise, there is a precondition to die at the right moment. It is to live at the moment. It is easier said than done; it is a difficult requirement to fulfill as we don’t know when is the right moment.

At night, you get work-related Kakao talk messages. The right moments for sleep and work are confusing. You skip meals, so the right moment for eating is also blurry. When you are addicted to stress, you forget about the right moment for rest, and thus, anxiety follows. You need to work even if you get Covid-19. The capacity building follows tomorrow after you came up with an innovative idea today. You would hope for someone to stop you before you drift apart too far from the right moment.

Ban Chil-hwan’s poem has four stops. In his poem, one clump of toothed ixeridium stops our run at a gallop. It is a swallow that reduces our anxiety. And it whispers to us to stop for a moment. You feel like you lose out and stop forever, but the poet says otherwise. We live and breathe thanks to that stop. I stopped at the right moment. In an era where we cannot only run at the right moment, we want to live at the moment.