A Fortune Reading Made Me Think About How I Want to Grow Old

During a saju reading — Korean four-pillars fortune-telling — it came up that I'm a “great white dog.” At first I took it as nothing more than an amusing metaphor: a yellow rabbit on the outside, a great white dog as the true form, with a great piece of iron inside. But as the conversation went on, I suddenly got curious. When this big dog has lived a very long time and grown old, what would it look back on before it could say, “Still, I lived well”?

How many fights it fought probably won't matter. Having strength doesn't mean you must use it every time. The world is full of things that are wrong and things I don't like, but if you lunge at every visible problem, you wear yourself out before your opponent does. You lose time, you lose people, and you lose even the strength to look after what you're supposed to protect. So I've come to think that strength is not the state of being able to tear into anything — it's closer to the state of being able to bite, yet still judging what not to bite.

But where something gives off a truly strange smell, I don't want to just walk past. A practice maintained for no reason except that it's old, a procedure whose necessity no one can explain, a structure where someone keeps suffering but is left alone because everyone is used to it — if such things exist, I want to go up close and look at least once. I won't smash them from the start, though. First you look at why it was built that way, check whether a reason for it still exists, and judge whether it can be repaired and kept alive. The belief that new is always right and old is always wrong is just another kind of stubbornness. Save what can be saved; and when something has truly reached the end of its life, clear it away without regret and build something better. The strength I hope for is that kind.

Yet what I'll want to recall first in old age will probably be people, more than the structures I changed. What kind of person I was to my family and the person I love, to my friends and the people who walked with me a long time — that is what remains longer. However much I built, if the people closest to me always had to stay tense at my side, it would be hard to call that a good life. But if my being there let them feel a little safer, if they could come to me on hard days, if I kept my place at the moments that mattered — then with that alone I'd say I accomplished quite a lot. Maybe the reason a big dog exists is not to keep fighting, but to guard the place where its people can live with their minds at ease.

I want to leave something similar in my work. I don't want to end up having built only things that stay alive solely because I keep moving. A company, a product, a system, or a person I worked with — someday I want them to run well even after leaving my hands. If someone's work gets a little easier even when I'm not there, if my way of working carries on to other people, if what I built becomes the base on which the next person makes something better, that will remain longer than simply having done a lot of work. A good structure does not depend on its maker forever. It is only properly built when it can survive its maker stepping away.

I want to earn plenty of money, too. Not because money is life's final goal, but because when money runs short, you end up fighting even the fights you didn't want. The freedom to refuse work you hate, the freedom to spend time with the people you love, the freedom not to bare your teeth for survival even in old age — these are possible on top of a certain economic foundation. So I don't think the desire to make money and the desire to live a warm life necessarily stand on opposite sides. What I want is closer to a life where, precisely because I've earned enough, I don't have to fight — a life where I can hand my time to the people who need it.

And someday I want to rest, truly and comfortably. Having moved hard in your youth doesn't mean you must keep moving for life. If you feel anxious every moment you rest, if you can't endure time in which you do nothing, then in the end you've been captured by the work you made. Living well must include not only the ability to produce a great deal but also the ability, at some point, to say, “This is enough.”

So sometimes I imagine a very old day. In a sunlit spot, a big dog lies stretched out at ease. Around it, the people it loves are living their own lives well, and the things it built when it was young now run on their own without needing its touch. The world will still hold much to fix and strange smells will still drift by, but there is no need to follow every scent. It lifts its head for a moment, sees this one isn't its business, and lies back down comfortably.

When that time comes, I hope I can look back on my life and say this.

What deserved biting, I did not bite carelessly — I chose properly and bit properly. The people I had to protect, I protected to the end. I saved what could be saved, changed what had to be changed, and left behind a few things that will remain after I'm gone. And through it all, I did not lose the time to live together with the people I love.

Then it's probably enough. Not the dog that won the most, but the dog that knew exactly what it was protecting. The dog that, at the end, needs to prove nothing — that can show its belly under the sun and lie down at ease. That is how I want to grow old.