“The important thing is to live the life you want,
That's all"

Reading with Professor Jinseok Choi
Life sentences that make me live as just one me!

There is a story about an old man who couldn't catch a fish for 84 days.
On the morning of the 85th day, before setting out to sea, the old man mutters, “I feel confident today,” and boards the boat again.
And, even if we are not fishermen, there are those of us who spend a long time feeling empty and hopeless, feeling like our lives are tough and that we have accomplished nothing.
As you leave the house in the morning, exhausted and worn out, can you mutter, "Today, I feel confident," like an old man? In the whirlwind of everyday life, people are busy.
Even though you are heading somewhere, you don't really know where you are going.
What is important to me?
Where did my mind go to find what was important?

Philosopher Professor Jin-Seok Choi says, “What’s important is living the life you want” and “existing as just one self.”
To find what we truly want, we need consistent and sincere 'questions' rather than fixed 'answers'.
Answers are a passive activity that stops us from moving forward, while questions are an active attempt to go beyond the world we knew before.


Professor Jinseok Choi compares reading a book to riding a 'magic carpet'.
Reading books makes it possible to ride on a flying carpet and move towards the 'next'.
The high wisdom accumulated through books is the power that moves humans forward to the 'next' step.
Humans are beings who do not stay still but change, so if they stop, they decay, but if they move on, they become alive.
A life of crossing over is the most humane life, and by developing the habit of reading books, you can further develop that inner strength.

This book is based on the contents of the reading movement 'Reading and Crossing Over', which took place from July 2020 to April 2021, in which people read ten literary works together and shared their opinions, including 'Don Quixote', 'The Little Prince', 'The Plague', 'Demian', 'The Old Man and the Sea', 'Animal Farm', 'Gulliver's Travels', 'Aesop's Fables', 'The True Story of Ah Q', and 'Jingbirok'.
They are all stories of people who endlessly question and explore to discover their 'true selves', or stories of foolish people who do not know who they are and cannot walk towards themselves.
“Who am I? How do I want to live? What kind of person do I want to be? What is my calling that I must fulfill before I die?” Let’s sincerely ask ourselves about the life we ​​truly want and move forward through the hidden life sentences in ten pieces of literature that make us endlessly question ourselves.

There is a line like this in the novel.
“Every day is a new day.
“It would be better if I had luck, but I would rather do it accurately.” In some books, it is translated as “For now, I will focus on what I am trying to do.”
It means that in order to seize an opportunity, you must be prepared to seize that opportunity.
There is only one way to do that.
You have to focus on what you are doing now as if each day is a new day.

--- p.137

“Tomorrow will be a wonderful day.” A person who knows life says this to himself.
These are the people who silently walk towards themselves, and instead of reproaching themselves, they remain alone to the end, loving and protecting themselves even when everyone leaves.
Their spells are effective.
(…) If you don’t lose hope, there is a high place prepared for you everywhere.

--- p.150

We just need to have that one dream, that absurd lump inside us, rather than all the other miscellaneous things. If someone said to me, “You’re not good at studying and you’re not rich,” I would say this.
“I have a dream and a calling.
“I am a person with hope.”
--- p.253

Why do we not want to think and why do we become unable to think?
That's because I'm lazy.
Thinking is hard work, but people don't want to do hard work.
The only time we do hard work is when we know that doing it will bring us greater benefits.
What are the big benefits here? Fulfilling a calling, making a lot of money, and having more influence.

Finding your calling is quite a difficult task, like going into and out of the magma of an erupting volcano.
‘Starting tomorrow, I must find my calling.’ This is not as easy as it sounds.
But there is only one way to make whatever we do now our calling.
That is to ask truthfully and thoroughly.
Asking these questions is the most fundamental: ‘Who am I?’ ‘How do I want to live?’ ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’ ‘What is my calling that I must fulfill before I die?’
If you ask yourself this question thoroughly, you will discover how you want to live.
Then it becomes a calling.
Nothing will be solved without reflecting on who you are, what you want to be, and what you want.
No happiness comes.
Only by asking yourself thoroughly and truthfully can you walk toward yourself.

--- p.284

The path of a person who knows who he is is a straight and high climb, while the path of a person who does not know who he is is often a bumpy and downhill slope.
Everyone wants to have a smooth ride in life, but that luck isn't granted to everyone.
Only those who know themselves can seize that luck.
If you don't know yourself, life can easily become a mess.

--- p.295

Some people ask why we should live as ourselves, but life is too short to live without thinking.
It would be nice if life were long enough to live as myself and not as myself, to live freely and to live dependently, but life is too short for that, so I have to do this job of living properly as myself.
I hope that through 'Reading and Crossing Over', you will come to understand the importance of thinking and the value of an independent and free life.

--- p.323