Prologue I hope you too can live as strong as a tree.

Chapter 1.
Learning from the world's oldest and wisest philosopher, a tree

A tree doesn't ruin today by worrying about tomorrow.
What the tree taught me when I was helpless
Why Newly Budded Trees Resist Growth
It all starts with stopping well.
A word from an old man that surprised me
The older the forest, the more gaps there are.
As we live, there come moments when we have to somehow endure.
The truth of life realized while walking in the forest
What Growing Trees and Raising Children Have in Common
Why I Held My Father's Funeral Three Times

Chapter 2.
A tree doesn't ruin today by worrying about tomorrow.

How to live
Learn how to descend well from the yew tree
Everyone who wants to start will be brave like a seed.
Common mistakes people make when planting trees
Why I Don't Climb the Mountain
Questions you must ask yourself before you die
Living in accordance with the laws of nature
There is no being in this world that can be treated carelessly.
In the end, softness overcomes strength.
For those preparing for the second act of their lives

Chapter 3.
What I've Learned from 30 Years as a Tree Doctor

The best things come to those who don't give up.
Why I'm Studying for the Exam Again Now That I'm in My Sixties
Create a one-of-a-kind business card
The Tree Doctor's Praise of Sleep
About the life of recording what we learn from Naite
Why Children Should Grow Up in the Forest
What it means to work
Why I bought land and planted trees instead of grain
Things I learned while building a small house with my own hands
It's up to me what kind of day today will be.
Things to do before you get older

Chapter 4.
The joy of living with trees

If I lived on a deserted island, the tree I would take with me - the red maple
Not all shortcomings lead to feelings of inferiority - Far Tree
If you want to go far, go together - Metasequoia
Come if you want, do you think I'll lose? - Bermuda Tree
it's okay.
How about slowing down? - Pine Tree
Sometimes I give myself a gift - Cherry Blossom
To the fathers of this land, and to those who will live as fathers - Hwangchilnamu
Neither grass nor tree, but I am bamboo in my own way.

Chapter 5.
How to live in this world as firmly as a tree with deep roots

A tree you want to show your loved one - Misennamu
There are times when you have to give up something to get something - Gaebakdalnamu
In the spirit of 'do it or not' - Tulip Tree
The tree that comes to mind when I miss my mother - the barley tree
What I Want to Say to a Thirty-Year-Old - Acacia Tree
If you keep building walls with someone - Tangerine Tree
Even if you try to shake it, you won't be shaken - Pine Tree
May my life be a fragrance like this to someone - Baekrihyang

“Whenever I’ve faced life’s difficult questions, I’ve always found the answers in trees.”
Learning from the world's oldest and wisest philosopher, a tree

Everyone has a weight in life that they must carry.
All living beings must live, taking responsibility for something and enduring it in exchange for their lives.
So, at this crossroads, what should we choose and what should we discard? It's no exaggeration to say that the level of happiness in life depends on the degree of satisfaction we achieve with our choices, making choices difficult and challenging for everyone.
How reassuring it would be if there was always someone by your side to guide you through those times.


There are those who say they learned about life from trees.
This is Woo Jong-young, a tree doctor who has been taking care of sick trees for 30 years.
For him, the tree was a teacher and philosopher who gave him the wisest answers whenever he faced difficult and challenging tasks, and a mother-like being who gave him a sense of rest and peace just by being by his side.
He says that thanks to the tree, he was able to turn his gaze back to life even in moments of frustration when he wanted to give up everything.

“I have been living as a tree doctor for 30 years.
After thinking about it carefully, I realized that it wasn't me who took care of the tree, but rather the tree that gave me life.
Even when faced with difficult problems in life, I unconsciously found answers in trees.
I couldn't dare complain about the hardships of the tree, which bloomed and bore fruit every year despite growing in the crevices of the rocks on the top of a barren mountain.
Watching the tree calmly accept its absurd fate of having to live in one place for its entire life gave me the strength to never give up.
So I think.
Let's live the remaining days just like a tree.
“Like a tree that lives its life to the fullest until the very end and then returns to the earth without regret, I hope to live each day happily and joyfully without regret and then close my eyes in peace.”

“Standing by a tree, unnecessary tasks and meaningless relationships become clear, and life naturally becomes simpler.”
What a deep-rooted tree wants to tell a human who keeps shaking

People often think of trees as passive beings.
I guess they will just tolerate the given environment and not be able to actively respond to it.
Although trees appear to always remain in their place, they are actually the most sensitive living creatures to changes in their environment.
Because they cannot move, they are absolutely affected by the environment, and in order to survive, they must quickly respond to even the smallest changes in their surroundings.


For example, even though they are the same species, trees growing on the border between deserts and grasslands have fewer branches and fewer leaves on their branches compared to trees growing on fertile soil.
Instead, the leaves are thick to survive in dry climates.
If you go straight into the desert, it will lose all the leaves it had and leave only thorns where the leaves should be.
In order to survive in a changing environment, one must not insist on one's original form, but rather adapt to it.


Thousand trees and thousand shapes.
It means that there are a thousand shapes in a thousand trees.
The unique shape of a tree is the result of its best efforts to survive in its given environment, living each moment as if it were its last.
The tree does not hesitate at all before making a choice.
Focus on this moment with all your might, as if today were your whole life.
This ability to not blame the given environment, to accept change, and to fully adapt to the current situation is the tree's primary survival strategy and the driving force that enabled it to become the oldest living organism on this planet.

Knowing the terrifying determination of trees, one begins to wonder whether humans are truly wiser than trees.
The material abundance and freedom of choice given to us living in modern society are gifts that people of previous eras could not enjoy, but on the other hand, they are also a source of suffering.
According to a report in National Geographic, humans make more than 150 choices a day.
With so many choices, people become stressed about the choices themselves.
Because they worry that their choices will lead to wrong results or that they will miss out on something better.
In the end, modern people who do not want to miss anything end up in a situation where they cannot do anything because they are entangled in more work and complex human relationships.
It's like living each day as if you're being shaken.


If you think about it, only humans sacrifice the present for a future that hasn't even arrived yet.
A tree never ruins today by worrying about tomorrow.
From hundreds of millions of years ago until now, the tree's choice has always been 'today'.
So, when you feel fearful about making choices, big or small, why not listen to the tree's advice?
This may be why people turn to the forest when their minds are complicated.
When you stand next to a tree, unnecessary tasks and meaningless relationships become clear, and life becomes simpler on its own.

“I hope you too can live like a tree.”
A solid way to live in this world, learned by staying by the tree for a long time

The more we learn about trees, the more we are amazed by their age-old wisdom in living their lives, and it also provides us with considerable insight into our own lives today.

The chances of a tree seed sprouting are usually less than 10 percent.
The rest becomes food for animals or rots away.
Even if you try hard to sprout a tree, it won't grow for several years.
This is because the small amount of nutrients produced from the small leaves are used only to grow the roots.
Meanwhile, the tree fights only with itself, regardless of the outside world.
No matter how tempting the warm sunlight is, no matter how the surrounding trees grow tall and proud, it never grows tall toward the sky.
The average period of time spent like this is 5 years.
Only after a considerable amount of time has passed and the roots have become strong, can growth begin.
The properties of this tree are a great comfort to those who spend time in patience.
The tree shows us that truly good things in life don't come easily, and that obtaining something valuable and precious requires a certain amount of hard work.


Trees also provide valuable lessons to parents raising children.
The most common mistake people make when planting trees is planting them in a place they like, rather than a place the tree would like.
However, if you want a tree to grow well, you must plant it in a place where its nature can be expressed well, and then abandon it.
If love goes too far and you keep touching it and shaking it to the roots, the tree will not only lose its ability to grow on its own, but it will also die prematurely.
The same goes for raising children.
If parents' love and worry are excessive, it is easy to ruin the child.
Conversely, if you refrain from interfering and watch your child from a distance, your child will learn to make his or her own choices and take responsibility for his or her own life from an early age.

Trees age differently.
Trees that live more fiercely than anything else in the world, but do not harm anything and instead know how to embrace other life.
As trees grow older, they hollow out their interior, and the empty space they occupy hosts small animals and insects.
The hollow interior of the tree transforms into a hiding place for animals exhausted from the harsh winds and rain of midwinter.
As we go through life, there comes a time when we have to hand over what we were doing and take a step back.
When that time comes, rather than holding on to what we have like a tree, why not let it go and reveal the empty space?
Didn't Lao Tzu say it too?
“Just as a vessel must be empty to be useful, so emptiness is useful.”

This book contains various wisdoms of trees that make us reflect on human life.
It also contains the hope that by learning about the trees that are always by our side but that we have not noticed, we will gain comfort and peace that cannot be found from people, and learn how to live a better life.