We cannot see light, yet light allows us to see.

Light is the oldest language that has illuminated the universe,

and the energy that breathed life into matter made of elements.

 

We cannot know the essence of time, yet we live within time.

We know that all moments are closely woven and accumulated,

becoming time at last. The moment we call now always turns

into the past with great speed.

 

A garden is filled only with life.

The instinct of life, the will toward living, is what makes a garden beautiful.

It does not complain against the trials of the seasons;

it blooms, withers, and yields.

 

Perhaps this will toward life, this life (生),

is the very will to remember moments of light,

and perhaps it is the calling given to all living things.

 

Life is finite.

But the light of the universe and the accumulation of all moments are eternal.

And so, within the garden that remembers moments of light,

our lives, through art, become eternally finite and finitely eternal.

 

July 2026,

Hyunmin Kim