“Words and writing have their own temperature.”

Words and writing have their own temperature.
The degree of warmth and coldness varies from person to person.
Moderately warm language embraces sadness.
When people feel weary from life, some people talk to friends to vent their worries, while others read books and find solace in the words of the author.
So, what would be the temperature of our language as we pick up this book? If a loved one leaves us because of a single thoughtless word, wouldn't our "verbal temperature" be too hot?
If someone closes their heart because of a sentence or two, it may be because the 'temperature of the text' is too cold.
perhaps.

Author Lee Ki-joo is a person who enjoys eavesdropping and recording.
He confesses that his bad habit kicks in whenever he gets on a bus or subway.
Listen to the conversations of ordinary people with your ears perked up.
And when a meaningful sentence comes into my ears, I quietly note it down.
Because it seems like there might be a desperate story hidden in the words they exchange and the sentences they scribble out without thinking.
"The Temperature of Language" is a book that densely captures the author's discovery of meaningful words and phrases in everyday life, the etymology and origin of words, and the preciousness and urgency of such language.
If you breathe life into each sentence as you turn each page and read it carefully, savoring it as if you were eating a moderately hot meal, you might be able to reflect on your own 'language temperature.'

Temperature of Language

Yesterday I turned on my laptop and tried to type in 'people' but accidentally typed 'life'.
Come to think of it, if you secretly change the final consonant in 'person', it becomes 'love', and if you secretly remove the vowel from 'person', it becomes 'life'.
Is it because the three words are similar?
It seems that there is no one who lives without being entangled in love, and no life without love interfering with it.
---From "Where did the word love come from?"

As the food was about to run out, the topic shifted to love.
A friend of mine who works as an editor at a magazine emphasized that the moment you fall in love, you start having disturbing fantasies.
“When you like someone, you become obsessed with the desire to have not only their ‘day’ but also their ‘night’.
Sometimes we try to be confident criminals who trust each other's feelings and steal each other's nights.
“Yeah, that must be love.”
The president of a publishing company that primarily plans and publishes philosophy books added to this story.
“The so-called ‘some’ is a struggle between the ‘confidence’ and ‘doubt’ that you have feelings for someone.
Certainty and doubt alternate like the ebb and flow of the tide.
Then, when the level of doubt gradually fades and only certainty remains, isn’t that when love truly begins?”
---From "I Still Care About You"

Writing isn't just left on the margins.
It is also engraved on the head and chest.
A phrase that is deeply embedded in the heart is a flower that does not wither.
We find comfort in looking at those flowers.
Sometimes, a single, concise sentence can soothe a wound and ease the emptiness of life.
---From "Scratch, Writing, Longing"

The Inuit (Eskimos) manage their anger wisely.
No, let it go.
They say that when they get angry, they stop what they are doing and just walk away.
How long? Until the anger subsides.

And when you think you've come far enough, leave a long stick there.
It's about leaving behind a place filled with overly hot emotions that could burn someone, entangled with hatred, resentment, and sorrow.
---From "How to Deal with Anger"

I once thought about the similarity between travel and wandering.
They are similar in that they both involve ‘leaving.’
However, while the beginning of the two acts is similar, the ending is very different.
The English word 'tour', meaning travel, comes from the Latin word 'tornus', meaning 'to go around' or 'to go around'.
What flows has the property of flowing and returning to its place.
Anyone who sets out on a journey will eventually return to the starting point of their journey.
If there is no place to return to, then perhaps it is not a journey but a wandering.
---From "Purpose of Travel"

Being able to share a glance with someone you love is truly a precious thing.
The act of opening one's eyes wide and looking closely at another person has quite an important meaning in our lives.
So the equation ‘Observation = Interest’ holds true.
When people lack interest, they don't look at each other.
There is no reason to be curious, so I look away.
It is ignoring.
“I don’t want to see you” means “I’m not interested in you” or “My passionate feelings have cooled down at some point.
It is often used interchangeably with the phrase “No, it got cold.”
Maybe that's why.
Looking back, it seems that the moment I stopped being interested, I also stopped observing the other person.

---From “Observation is Interest”