I Will Take Your Hand and Grow Old with You

answered by Shijing, "Ji Gu" (Airs of Bei)

기원전 11~7세기(주나라 시가 모음)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Floating Clouds (1955)

dir. Mikio Naruse · Japan

A person cannot, in the end, release someone who does not hold them dear. To pour a whole life toward a heart that will not return — should we call it devotion, or an attachment that wounds the self? What, in truth, is a heart that turns toward another to the very last?

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

A heart that turns, to the very end, toward one who does not value it — is that love, or attachment?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

執子之手，與子偕老

死生契闊，與子成說。執子之手，與子偕老

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

In death or life we pledged our word; I take your hand and grow old with you.

💡 TL;DR

📝The Classic Answers

The Book of Songs sang, "I take your hand, as we vowed in death and life, and with you I will grow old." The weight of that ancient vow lies not only in the days the other values me, but in enduring even the day they do not. Yet I choose to tell a heart that stays faithful from an attachment that loses the self. If, before another's indifference, the root of my heart still keeps me whole, that is love; if it clings while burning the self away, that is attachment. The longer a heart turns toward another, the more it must turn from a place that keeps me whole, to stay love at all.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

If you have long clung to a heart that will not return, ask once honestly today: does this devotion keep me whole, or make me lose myself?

📖 Classic Source: Shijing, "Ji Gu" (Airs of Bei).
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.