I look at my watch and talk about my philosophy of life. When you look at the clock, the second hand moves vigilant. Usually, the second hand goes 360 degrees per one minute and then the minute hand follows. The minute hand rotates once an hour. Then there’s the hour hand. The hour hand rotates once every 12 hours. Now let’s take a closer look.

The second hand turns 360 degrees in one minute. In other words, it runs 360 degrees all the way. Then the minute hand runs 360 degrees in one hour and the hour hand travels 360 degrees in 12 hours. Here’s why I say this: When a person is born, some people are born with a second hand and must keep busy all day long. Some people are born with an hour hand, so they only need to do one lap every 12 hours. In other words, they are born to center themselves slowly without rushing. Of these, “I” myself is not trying to determine whether it is the second hand, the minute hand, or the hour hand. I just want to say that people have different roles and different appearances. On the other hand, when you make an appointment with someone, what do you usually pay attention to? We usually say ‘what time will we meet?’ In other words, ‘hour’ is the center. When I asked to meet you at what time, do I usually pay attention to the ‘seconds’? For a few seconds, no one cares. Next, pay attention to the minutes. This is because ‘minutes’ are a necessary requirement to be consulted in order to act. 

▲ Professor Kim Hyung-dong

Just as we focus on the hour hand and refer to the minute hand when we make a promise, it is the same in life. Therefore, the second hand can be thought of as ‘living like the second hand’ for a person who talks a lot in a very useless way. Are we going to focus on the person who just says useless things all day? Not at all. However, the minute hand can be likened to someone who talks properly. The hour hand is a person who guards his position and doesn’t talk much. If human beings grow older and their social status rises, their true role should be that of the hour hand, not the second hand. Let me give you another example. Young children who have just been born have to move a lot. Also, they have to keep saying anything. In this way, I would advise that young children should live a second hand life, while when they are older and have a social status, they should live an hour hand life. In addition, ‘how we were born’ is also quite an important matter. We can be born as a second hand, made into a minute hand, or established as an hour hand. Usually, people say this from time to time: When you see a fish in the water, you say, ‘Oh, I want him to breathe a little easier.’ What would happen if we pulled the fish out of the water? The fish dies. On the other hand, what happens if we see a fish having so much fun and sink into the water? We might lose our life. In other words, when it comes to caring for the other person, we should always refer to how they were made and how they were destined. I sometimes see that this is not the case in real life.

Let’s say we’re pets. Dogs are born with fur on their bodies, and to live outdoors, and to endure the cold. Sometimes, even though it’s very hot in the summer, we see a lot of people accompanying their dogs, dressed to make them look pretty. This is the same thing as the previous analogy, where a fish thinks it’s hard to breathe in the water and we pull it out. It’s very important to know how it’s positioned and how it’s made, not from our point of view. That’s why we should always know first how other living beings were born. When we were very young, if our children pooped, we would call a dog to eat it. Despite the fact that it is a natural construct that allows dogs to process human feces, modern society has continued to train dogs not to eat them. It is to think only from the point of view of human beings, not from the natural ones. We must realize that, like a clock, the hour, minute, and second hands are in place, that birth means difference and destiny is different. For the same reason, I think it makes sense of nature to see how they were born, to treat them in the way they deserve, and to get along with them.