Flowing On, Never Resting Day or Night

answered by Analects, Zi Han

기원전 5세기(공자 언행록)

🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS

Peppermint Candy (2000)

dir. Lee Chang-dong · South Korea

At life's final moment a person cries 'I want to go back,' retracing, against the current of time, how they lost their pure first self and came to ruin. It asks how to face a lost self before irreversible time, and what regret can do.

THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS

Having lost the pure self we wish to return to, what are we to do before time that cannot be reversed?

THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL

子在川上曰，逝者如斯夫，不舍晝夜

📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER

Standing by a stream, the Master said: thus do things flow away, never ceasing day or night.

💡 TL;DR

By a stream, watching the water, Confucius said that things flow away, never resting day or night.

📝The Classic Answers

By a stream, watching the water, Confucius said that things flow away, never resting day or night. I read this as an honest gaze at time's irreversibility. However one cries 'I want to go back,' the river does not run upstream, and the pure first self has already flowed away. Yet instead of a futile struggle to reverse the flow, what Confucius taught was how to live now upon that ceaselessly flowing time. We may mourn a lost innocence, but we cannot take it hostage to curse the present. Rather than resenting a past I cannot return to, I choose to set my heart on rebuilding who I am now upon the flowing river.

— ONGO · Curator

🌱Apply It Today

When 'if only I could go back' arises, shift the wish to reverse into: 'what can I set right now, upon that flow?'

📖 Classic Source: Analects, Zi Han. Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
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.