Prologue
For a lifetime, with joy
I studied philosophy.
Looking back, long before I chose a major, I was a child who often stopped in front of old books. Now and then a sentence written by someone centuries ago would name exactly what I was feeling that day. In those moments, time seemed to fold. Nothing else ever gave me quite that kind of joy.
People say the classics are difficult. They are right. They do not read quickly, and you cannot take them in all at once.
Yet because they are slow, the classics stay with a person for a long time. A story you read at ten becomes a different book at thirty, and another again at sixty. The book has not changed; I suppose we have. Quietly, the classics show us how we have grown.
I did not want this joy to end as something studied once and set aside.
For young readers, I hoped it would be their first deep story. For busy adults, a place to catch their breath. For those who have already lived through many seasons, an old friend. It can be study, or it can simply be pleasure. I only hoped it would last a lifetime.
So I built three houses.
Pyeonggojae, where we read old books together; Pyeongye, where we stand together before old paintings; and Pyeongeumjae, where we listen together to old music.
The last character of each name, 哉 (jae), is a character of wonder. "For a lifetime, with joy!" In the end, that is all we want to say.
And I have kept one more name in my heart, a single roof over all three houses: Pyeongyujae.
有 (yu) means "to be," "to exist." I believe that everyone who is here in this world ought to have joy. And I believe we should be able to enjoy, for a lifetime, the things that have long been with us: the books, paintings and music that crossed hundreds of years and are still here.
I hope people find joy, and I hope old things bring joy. Both wishes live in the name Pyeongyujae. I do not want to keep this to myself. I want to pass it on, little by little, to the people around me, the way you lend someone a book or ask them to listen to a song with you.
I have no wish to make a great noise about it. One sentence, one painting, one piece of music today is enough.
I hope that, added up, they become part of you someday.