Hello, this is Ditto.

When we fall in love with someone, we want to look deeply into their eyes and become one. We want them to understand everything about us, and we try to possess everything about them. However, such a burning obsession often ends up suffocating each other and poisoning the relationship.

The French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry depicted the true nature of love in his book Wind, Sand and Stars like this:
"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."

Struggling to force our steps to match the other person's pace is a painful endeavor. True companionship is respecting each other's unique rhythm and gait, while maintaining just enough distance to feel the warmth of each other's fingertips brushing by.

It is nice when someone holds an umbrella over you in the rain, but sometimes, just knowing there is someone by your side who will silently stand in the rain with you gives us the strength to keep living. Not leading from the front or pushing from behind, but walking by one's side, looking at the same scenery. That is the wisdom of walking together for a long time.

Do you have someone by your side who silently walks with you, looking toward the same horizon?

[Today's Poem]

Butterfly / Yoon Il-hyun

The life of a butterfly is a curve.

While the sparrow sitting by the jangdokdae
flies straight back and forth several times
to the power lines across the street,
the butterfly hovers between the salvia and four o'clocks
with a zigzagging flutter of its wings.

Father wandered the big cities like the wind,
and Mother lived her life fluttering like a butterfly
between the palm-sized soybean patch on the back mountain
and the small rice paddy in the front field.

Straightening the trajectory of the butterfly
and laying it out over the path the bird took,
how astounding: with those fragile wings,
it flew a distance farther than the bird.

That path Mother traveled back and forth
was a pain as long and distant as those winding curves.

Walking side by side is not about picking you up when you fall, but a silent promise to stay by your side and wait until you can stand up again on your own.
May you walk peacefully for a long time with that person by your side.

This was Ditto.