Intellectual Taste for a Dignified Life, Essays on Everyday Hobbies

The value of a hobby that creates elegant fragrances
Everyday Dignity for Those Who Want to Become Cultured

Knowing your hobby is like knowing yourself.
We face each new year without knowing what to do with ourselves.
Yoga, hiking, flower arranging, meditation, tea ceremony, writing… We let so many hobbies slip away in our daily lives.
How about discovering a hobby for yourself today?
We often think we need to set aside special time for our hobbies, but the truth is, we're always enjoying them.
A short walk after dinner, reading just three pages of a book before bed... These moments are not activities, but rather part of daily life, so they're hard to notice.
In this way, “Intelligent and Elegant from Forty” is a book that tells us what a hobby is as a way of life.
Something that has become a part of my daily life, like a hobby.
If you want to make the time that passes by in vain intelligent and elegant, you must discover the little things hidden in everyday life.

Elegance comes from concealment.
A noble person who behaves appropriately in any situation or place and is considerate when speaking.
We all acquire elegance.
Whether through books or media, I am always learning about 'elegance'.
The easiest way to make yourself elegant is through a hobby.
The determination to become a cultured person makes me a pianist and a painter.
Hobbies can also add vitality to life.
We should keep our hobbies close to us because “building up a culture based on pure interest for the fun of life saves me from burnout.”
A daily routine where I adjust my schedule when my greed becomes too much in a schedule full of hobbies, and take a break on tiring days.
Precious things are always by your side.
It is my job to find it and refine it.

Above all, I will lean on Goethe's advice that people should listen to beautiful music, read good poetry, and appreciate great paintings, even if only a little every day, and fully enjoy a moment of beauty.
The only way to examine and renew the standards of life that have emerged from the books I read, the conversations I have had with people, and the observations I have made of the world is through continuous learning.
---From "Starting"

I'm not so shameless as to expect something exciting to happen for free without doing anything.
When someone gives me a romantic look, I'm wary of strangers and suspicious of what they're trying to sell me. Spam emails claiming a distant relative left an inheritance just end up in the trash, and I don't even imagine what it would be like to become a millionaire overnight, even if only for a moment.
When your heart starts pounding for no reason, you start to worry, wondering if something is wrong.
I didn't reach forty smoothly and without a single scratch.
---From "In Search of Lost Excitement"

New stimuli make us use our brains to the fullest.
I started to vaguely understand things as I did exercises I had never done before every day, challenged myself with sketching even though I didn't know the basics of drawing, and approached things differently every day.
I think the most helpful way to strengthen your brain is to not avoid discomfort but to face it.
Intellectual stimulation is the only wise prescription these days as we move towards an age where it is easy to forget things.
---From "How to Become Smarter as You Age"

I'll stop here with this tasting of possibilities to see what I'm good at.
Because if that possibility ends after just a few attempts, it turns out that no possibility has been discovered.
While innate abilities cannot be ignored, the skills of this world develop in proportion to the time spent training.
If I continue to live the way I have lived before, I will remain the same person.
---From "The Genius of Leaning"

The anxiety I had built up while attending university in my hometown, comparing myself to my close friends in a small area, became nothing when I was placed among the top international students I met during my brief internship at a media company in Seoul.
There was frustration there.
When I came out into society, it was full of people of a 'different level' that were incomparable to me.
Why do people constantly compare themselves and want to know where they stand in society?
I find this animalistic instinct to rank things disgusting, but I also find that sometimes these comparisons serve as a catalyst for personal goals.

---From "First Encounter with Freedom"

In studying without a grand goal, the important thing is to build a solid foundation, not to learn step by step, but to maintain my interest first.
It is enough to just look at the masterpiece in front of you, find an interpretation of the striking poetic words, and understand the original meaning.
So, since you don't have to objectively prove your skills, you have as much freedom as possible.
---From "5 Minutes of Chinese Characters Every Day"

Strangeness in familiarity.
I say this whenever I feel like a stray cat.
No matter where I live, there's one thing that never changes: to make the most of the intellectual opportunities the city offers while I'm there.
May you live your life filled with learning that will enrich your spiritual life.
---From "In Search of Intellectual Stimulation"

It is the hope that living faithfully in a time without stimulation can at some point turn into great joy.
To put it bluntly, it means enjoying the process, but these days, I'm a person who doesn't think there's a need to be conscious of everything, so I don't necessarily try to find happiness in the process, and I'm not obsessed with the outcome.
It is said that as people age, their nature changes to become calmer like water.
Perhaps it's the change of heart that comes with age, but the days of silently keeping my place and repeating the same thing aren't so bad.

---From "The Power to Endure Boredom"

Now, more than thirty years after I seriously considered what I should write in the future aspirations column when I was ten, I have come to accept that I have no particular genius talent.
From then on, I made it my goal to repeat things ignorantly in everything I did.
Rather than a specific goal, it was more like a wish that if I just kept at it, maybe I would achieve it someday.
Maybe it's because I don't know the systematic training experience and the step-by-step achievements, but I just do it.

---From "What Comes After Persistence"