Spirits do not Inherit

We lack independent egos - that's what a 14-year-old thought while studying for his middle school memorization course. Even though I tried to persuade myself -- memorizing things so they would stay in her head for the rest of her life and be used in the future -- I still couldn't quite understand why this was necessary. Then one day, I had an idea.

• I must isolate and preserve my individuality, creativity, and dreams.
• I must find a way to escape the infinite orbit of these exams as soon as possible.

Individuality, creativity, and dreams are the three most essential elements of an individual's self, and it took me a while to define them. Of the three, dreams are the glass ceiling you put on yourself. That's not to say that you shouldn't have grandiose dreams; it's just that they have a different weight of value. It's glorious enough to live in a bleak world and only care about your happiness and those around you. It's such a... bleak world to live in.

Today, let's talk about the first of these, individuality. To get somewhere, I need to know where I'm coming from, and a big part of that personality is the realm of taste because we all become what we like.

I took it as a matter of survival that without individuality, the metaphor of me is as good as dead, and I've more or less centered on who I am and what I'm about. But it's a world where the manifestation of substance is more important than the existence of information. It's a world where only information matters in a sea of data.

So I wished my personality had been replaced by something tangible, something physical that I could access -- that's what I thought.

It's so easy to get swept up in what's around you without any resistance: do because others are doing it, see because others are seeing it, or do because others are doing it! It's all around us more often than we realize. But when you think about it, it doesn't answer why. To find the answer, you need to know who you are.

Unfortunately, uniqueness is smaller and more fragile than the sound of a breeze in the middle of summer. It's also hard to capture because it's a collection of little things. So we must live with the following sentence in the back of our minds for a long time.

Personality, or spirit, is not something that inherits naturally. You must constantly explore, record, and study to realize, "Oh, I like this!"

At some point, I decided to invest in my personality fully. I decided that when I like something, I will express it intensely and without any shame. So, for example, I send you guys K-pop videos without trying, and I add all kinds of praise to them. This intense expression is something I started doing on purpose, thinking, "If I keep telling other people what I like, maybe I'll find out what I like...". Of course, there's still a long way to go, but I feel like I've succeeded to a certain extent because I've heard that the concept is solid among you guys, so my favorite thing to hear is, "This is obviously Sunghyun, hahaha."

Rome wasn't built in a day, Seoul wasn't in a day, and your vast and glorious culture is just a scribble in the corner of a notebook. So it's up to you to figure out how to capture and nurture it.