answered by The Book of Songs, "Liao E" (Minor Odes)
기원전 11~7세기(주나라 시가 모음)
🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS
The Way Home (2002)
dir. Lee Jeong-hyang · South Korea
A city-raised child is left with a rural elder who cannot even share his language. At first the child scorns the elder's poverty and silence, yet the size of a love that only gives, wordlessly, cannot be measured. Before a love that asks for no repayment, what does a person learn?
THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS
Do I only begin to measure the size of the hands that raised me in silence after those hands are gone?
THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL
欲報之德 昊天罔極
父兮生我 母兮鞠我 欲報之德 昊天罔極
📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER
My father gave me life, my mother reared me. I long to repay their kindness, but it is boundless as the vast sky.
📝The Classic Answers
Whenever I read this ancient song, my throat tightens. The old poet lamented that though he longed to repay his parents' kindness, it was boundless as the sky and beyond all repaying. The hands that raise us rarely take credit. The countless labor of cooking, washing, sitting up through sick nights flowed by without a name. Knowing I can never fully repay that love, I choose today to voice even one ten-thousandth of what I received. Repayment may come late, but recognition must not.
— ONGO · Curator
🌱Apply It Today
Recall one specific act of labor by someone who raised you, and say aloud, "I was grateful for that."
📖 Classic Source:
The Book of Songs, "Liao E" (Minor Odes).
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.
✦
A Bridge Between Eras — the wisdoms this question threads
Reading the new through the old — classics this question awakens.
