Condemiang's Choices

My Favourite Friends

An image of three puppies and three kittens in circular frames, each gazing forward with adorable and gentle expressions.

Software

A diagram of the electromagnetic spectrum, showing the frequency and wavelength ranges from radio waves to gamma rays, including examples and atmospheric transparency.

Light is both illumination and the very source of distortion and blindness to us. Don’t ask me why—please. Explaining it is so complicated that I’d end up foaming at the mouth and spitting as I talk. But if you really insist, we’d better do it over a drink—at least the spit from an alcohol-disinfected mouth would be somewhat safer.


A black-and-white photograph of a young poet Rainer Maria Rilke, gazing intensely at the camera.
It was through Rainer Maria Rilke that I first discovered metaphor—those quiet bridges between the visible and the invisible. From that moment, I stepped gently but irrevocably into the realms of literature, history, and philosophy. I chose the sciences, yes, and spent the next 38 years shouldering the consequences of that decision. But I never wonder if the other path would have been better. I believe the person I’ve become is the best possible result of the road I walked.

A black-and-white portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis, with a serious expression and neatly trimmed beard, gazing directly at the camera.
I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Most of what I longed for came to me. And the things I didn’t attain? Perhaps they were never what I truly desired in the first place.

It may sound ironic, but it was Freud who opened my eyes to the world of ideas—despite his theories emerging from the materialist current that swept across Europe in his time. He revealed to me the depths of the human psyche: the conscious and the unconscious, the ego, the superego, the id. These, I felt, belonged not just to the body, but to the intangible world of the mind.

A reconstructed image of Jesus based on the appearance of an ancient Middle Eastern man, as presented by the BBC.
Through Jesus, I encountered moral and social justice, nobility of spirit, and the gravity of fate. Camus led me to anarchism, and Marx exposed me to materialism, capitalism, communism—and the seductive illusions of ideology: their vanity, their fiction, their futility. And then there was Nietzsche.


A black-and-white photograph of philosopher and writer Albert Camus smiling warmly in front of a bookshelf.
A classic black-and-white portrait of philosopher Karl Marx, featuring his thick beard and curly hair.
An emotional illustration of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche embracing the neck of a horse with its eyes closed.

Nietzsche didn’t just stir me—he shook me. His ideas offered hope, of all things: that suffering could be transformed, that fate could be confronted, and that I could become more than I am now. The eternal recurrence, the Übermensch, the Last Man, the camel, the lion, the child—these weren’t just abstractions. They were electric, visceral images that lived inside me.

Looking back, this is the shape of my epistemological evolution. From the moment I first realized there is something—within me and around me—this awareness has been forming who I am. And it still is.

"I stopped expecting happiness to come in bright, complete packages. Life, I’ve come to accept, is a composition of suffering. But that acceptance changed everything."
- Condemiang -

There was a time when I wrote poems. Before employment swallowed me whole, I had a voice. But once I stepped into the world of office life, I was rapidly swept away by the usual forces: drinking, distractions, sensory indulgence, and overwork. Somewhere in that ceaseless struggle, the young man with fierce resolve disappeared into time. I no longer recall exactly what I’d resolved to do—but I imagine it had something to do with achieving something grand, something hard. Like many of us, I once dreamed of leaving a mark.

Then, one day, I sensed—perhaps even detected—the cruelty and emptiness of social media. I quit it. The word detection implies intrusion, and it was that: an invasion of spirit. Now, I try to avoid videos, aware of their addictive gloss and numbing effect. We seek comfort for our bruised souls—some quick release, something to soothe us when time is short and the heart is tattered. And so, we scroll, we click, we sigh.

But I prefer communication through language—actual language. I avoid abbreviated slang and fragmented chats. I want to write, to shape my thoughts, to leave traces of thinking behind. I want to look back, re-read, remember, and live reflectively. Perhaps then, I might meet a version of myself each day who is slightly better than the day before.

A black-and-white photograph of Jeong Tae-chun and Park Eun-ok, a Korean musician couple, smiling and chatting in a park.
I once loved the songs of Jeong Tae-chun and Park Eun-ok. Because I could strum a guitar and plink a piano, I often played and sang along. At one point, I flirted with the idea of joining a band. Later, I dreamed—briefly—of becoming a theater actor. But I didn’t do those things. Not because I chose not to—but because I simply couldn’t. It wasn’t about ambition. I just liked the feeling of being alive, of playing.

Doing what you want is much harder than doing what you don’t. When you dislike something, you can quit with noble excuses. But when you love something, the pressure to excel and the creeping fog of boredom make it almost unbearable to continue. That’s why I probably gave up early—on all the things I once thought I wanted.

As for the future...

I’m walking toward four dreams, and I carry them carefully, step by step. But honestly, what kind of world is this for dreams? Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing in slow things—hope, effort, time. We became people of the moment, addicted to now.

And now, in a world overflowing with heartless hedonists and soulless professionals, I ask myself: What kind of life is meaningful? What kind of life leaves no regrets? But knowing the answer doesn’t come easy, I find myself without the courage—or even the clarity—to offer guidance to those younger than me.

Today, we’ve all been given a new commandment: Survive by any means necessary. Because to expect solidarity from those without ownership of the means of production... is as futile as hoping for paradise on earth.


Korean version: https://deposo.tistory.com/pages/%EC%BD%98%EB%8D%B0%EB%AF%B8%EC%95%99%EC%9D%98-%EC%84%A0%ED%83%9D

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