Baek Se Hee Quotes

I wonder about others like me, who seem totally fine on the outside but are rotting on the inside, where the rot is this vague state of being not-fine and not-devastated at the same time.

Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed.

When you're having a hard time, it's natural to feel like you're having the hardest time in the world. And it's not selfish to feel that way.

You keep obsessively holding yourself to these idealised standards, forcing yourself to fit them. It's another way, among many, for you to keep punishing yourself.

What do I wish for? I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease.

In effect, it's your thoughts that are torturing you.

I hope you will listen to a certain overlooked and different voice within you. Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too.

I am someone who is completely unique in this world, someone I need to take care of for the rest of my life, and therefore someone I need to help take each step forwards, warmly and patiently, to allow to rest on some days and to encourage on others - I believe that the more I look into this strange being, myself, the more routes I will find to happiness.

To right every wrong you come across in the world would be an impossible endeavor for any one person. You're just one person, and you're putting too much of the weight of the world on yourself.

If twenty-year-old me met me today, she would cry with joy. And that's enough for me.

What matters isn't what people say but what you like and find joy in. I hope you focus less on how you look to other people and more on fulfilling your true desires.

To tell the truth, no one was looking down on me except myself.

Perhaps you're co-dependent on your work as well. When you get good results, your worth is realised and you relax, but that satisfaction doesn't last long - that's the problem.

I used to love being alone. Lying in my bed as I read or daydreamed, taking walks, listening to music on the bus or subway, napping, all of these were my favourite times of the day. But for the past two weeks I've felt inundated by a strange feeling called 'boredom'.

But again, you can enjoy the freedom of your own thoughts. Instead of thinking, 'I must not have these thoughts.

Your self-esteem determines how you feel about the sincerity of others.

I want to love and be loved. i wan to find a way where I don't hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.

But books are different. I often look for books that are like medicine, that fit my situation and my thoughts, and I read them over and over again until the pages are tattered, underlining everything and still the book will have something to give me. Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed. That's one of the nicest things about books.

This is a record of a very ordinary, incomplete person who meets another very ordinary, incomplete person, the latter of whom happens to be a therapist.

Sometimes, when someone tells me to 'Cheer up' when I'm going through a tough time, I just want wring their neck.

I feel too young to have seen the life and death of a living sentient being.

Fear increases when it's something that you keep to yourself. Instead of suffering alone, it can often be good to share it with someone else.

It’s impossible to fathom the sadness of those who are left behind, but if life gives one more suffering than death, shouldn’t we respect their right to end life? We are so bad at mourning in our society. Maybe it’s a failure of respect. Some call those who choose their own death sinners or failures or losers who give up. Is living until the end really a triumph in every case? As if there can be any true winning or losing in this game of life

Psychiatrist: If you make yourself anxious to gain attention, someone will give you attention. Then you get comfortable, and the other person will as well. But after that, you feel despair again. Despite your intentions, you start thinking, If I’m happy then this person will stop paying attention to me, which naturally leads to you trying to avoid becoming happy at all costs.

Looking deep within myself is always difficult. Especially when I’m in the throes of negative emotion. How shall I describe it? It’s like I know everything is fine, but I can’t stop myself from endlessly checking to make sure it really is fine, and in the process I make myself miserable. Today was like that. I just felt like whining. And leaning on someone, and being sad. To me, sadness is the path of least resistance, the most familiar and close-at-hand emotion I have. A habit that has encrusted itself onto my everyday.

Because it begins with me and ends with everyone.

It finally occurred to me that to expect someone to always be a certain way or consistently do a certain thing can be a huge burden on them.

I’m sad, but I’m alive, and living through it. That is my solace and my joy.

What I need to practice from now on is to stop trapping myself in the same formula of, 'This is what I have to be doing,' and to simply acknowledge the fact that I am an independent individual.

I don’t know why an individual has to be treated as less-than and strive to fit society’s standards when it’s the people who denigrate others who are the real problem. That frustrates me. That I can’t step out of this frame, that I still feel inferior when I meet someone supposedly superior to me, and that I feel confident and comfortable when I meet someone supposedly inferior – I absolutely loathe that about myself.

Ucapan semangat, ucapan pendukung agar kita bisa lebih berani dan ucapan agar kita tidak menciut bisa jadi adalah racun bagi kita.

I think when you look at as many sides of a person as possible, you stop disliking them.

I can do well today, or not. It’ll be an experience either way.

The important thing here isn't whether you are being loved, it's how you will accept the love that comes your way.

All beginnings and endings feel so heavy to me. I am too much of a worrier to focus on the happiness of the moment.

Art has given me faith: faith that today may not have been perfect but was still a pretty good day, or faith that even after a long day of being depressed, I can still burst into laughter over something very small.

Mungkin hidup bersama-sama dengan orang lain adalah cara yang tepat yang bisa memberikan napas lega di tengah dunia yang penuh dengan kegelapan dan kesesakan.

Even in my most unbearably depressed moments I could be laughing at a friend's joke but still feel an emptiness in my heart.

Being imperfect is all right and being awkward is okay. You don’t have to cheer up. I can do well today, or not. It’ll be an experience either way. And that’s fine.

Life is all about getting better and getting worse and getting better again, so getting worse is a natural part of life and I just have to learn to deal with it.

I want to own my own life. To do everything I want to do, so I don’t live a life of regret.

Meeting someone who moves your heart, writing something until it moves the hearts of others, listening to music and watching movies that depict love – I want to always be motivated by love.

Instead of being disappointed, try thinking this way: They’re living and breathing human beings too.

Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed. That's one of the nicest things about books.

It’s like I know everything is fine, but I can’t stop myself from endlessly checking to make sure it really is fine, and in the process I make myself miserable.

I hope you learn to look at a person as a whole before judging them.

I took a self-esteem quiz on the Internet and scored a -22.

If you have unrealistically high standards, you will forever be creating reasons to see yourself as inadequate, as someone who needs endless improvement.

Aku ingin menikmati gelombang perasaanku seolah aku sedang menari pada sebuah musik. Aku berharap aku bisa menjadi seseorang yang kebetulan menemukan secercah cahaya dan bertahan bersama cahaya itu setelah lama berjalan di dalam kegelapan yang besar. Aku percaya suatu hari nanti aku bisa menjadi seperti itu.

It's like you're running inside a hamster wheel. You try to get out of your depression through your efforts but fail, and this continuing cycle of trying and failing feeds back into the original depression.

To learn about and imagine the emotions that I don't understand or immediately empathize with: that is the affection I extend to others, and the only way to ensure that what's inside of us don't dry up or rot

I am someone who is completely unique in this world, someone I need to take care of for the rest of my life, and therefore someone I need to help take each step forward, warmly and patiently, to allow to rest on some days and encourage on others - I believe that the more I look into this strange being, myself, the more routes I will find to happiness.

I think you need to spatially separate your work and your rest. If you were stressed at work, you ought to be relaxing when you’re home, but you’re sitting at home listening to recordings of yourself. This mixes up the two spaces, which makes you feel near-constant shame and anxiety

When we're sinking in water, it can be a relief to feel the ground beneath our feet, the rock bottom, because we know we can kick against it to rise again. But if you can't feel the ground in life, the fear can be overwhelming.

Sometimes the best thing to do with people who would never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether. To right every wrong you come across in the world would be an impossible endeavour for any one person. You’re just one person, and you’re putting too much of the weight of the world on yourself.

I tend to go back and forth between romanticism and cynicism. Crossing those barriers between hot and cold, I forget the lukewarm boredom of life; that lukewarm state is what I fear the most. Unable to return to feeling hot or cold, to be numb within a state of room temperature. In that state, we’re nothing better than dead.

I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.

Books never tire of me. And in time they present a solution, quietly waiting until I am fully healed. That’s one of the nicest things about books.

Sometimes the best thing to do with people who would never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether.

people who don’t try to gain something from outside of themselves are those who end up gaining the most, that self-esteem and pride come from letting go of external validation.

If you grow enough self-esteem. When that happens, you may find you're no longer interested in aspiring to perfection or chasing some ideal.

I consider my public persona as the cover for what is underneath, a membrane no light can seep through. The inner thoughts that do not make it through the membrane fester inside of me. Which is why my thoughts are never clean, and it's hard to find a good thought in my inner rot.

There is no absolute good when it comes to relationships. And it's perfectly healthy to have disagreements with friends and lovers from time to time. I just hope you learn to differentiate the parts from the whole. Just because you like one ting about a person, you don't need to like everything about them. And just because you don't like one thing about a person, it doesn't mean the person as a whole isn't worth your time. I think you should get in the habit of thinking differently.

But nothing comes from scolding myself or hating myself for these feelings. I simply must accept that I have room for improvement, and consider these moments as constant opportunities for self-reflection, to feel shame and joy at having learned something new and to keep inching towards change... The only way for me to become a better person is to go my way little by little, as tedious as that can be.

I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don't hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say that things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time.

Sometimes, this directive to cheer up and buck up is like poison that rots one’s soul. Note that the bestselling self-help books and essay collections of the past ten years aren’t about whipping yourself, they’re about healing and consolation. Being imperfect is all right and being awkward is okay. You don’t have to cheer up. I can do well today, or not. It’ll be an experience either way. And that’s fine.

Things will get better with time. Or no, everything is dynamic, which means life will have jump-for-joy moments as well as bad ones, going back and forth like the tide. If I'm sad today I'll be happy tomorrow, and if I'm happy today I'll be sad tomorrow - that's fine. As long as I keep loving myself.

En lugar de compararte con otras personas, compárate con tu yo del pasado.

I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.

Sometimes the best thing to do with people who never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether.

Togetherness means altruism, and altruism is what saves us from selfishness.

It’s not your looks themselves that generate your obsessiveness. It’s because you have this idealised version of yourself in your head that you’re so obsessed with your looks.

What do I wish for? I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease. That's it.

if someone has high self-esteem, they don’t really care what other people think about them.

Aku ingin mengalami kegagalan kemudian mengarahkan lagi pandanganku ke jalan yang lebih baik

I wasn't deathly depressed, but I wasn't happy either, floating instead in some feeling between the two.

Your high school grades do not determine the rest of your life.

I don't know why an individual has to be treated as less-than and strive to fit society's standards when it's the people who denigrate others who are the real problem.

The moment you set out to be more empathetic is the moment it becomes a chore.

Me: How do I get out of this rut? Psychiatrist: Do you think it can be forced?

..., the more I hurt others, the bigger my own wounds become.

I’ve also realised that revealing my darkness is just as natural a thing to do as revealing my light.

Hoping there will come a day when we can all feel good about ourselves regardless of modifiers.

emotions have something like passageways, and if you keep blocking your bad emotions, you end up blocking your good emotions as well. Your emotional tunnels become blocked. That really rang true for me.

But just as a person who is dropped into a dark well must make a circle in order to determine they are inside a well, I am sure my continued attempts to be better will take shape into something resembling an octagon, or even a dodecahedron, and maybe one day a circle. I was told that my accumulated mistakes will create a stronger sense of self, that I was doing just fine, that I was perfectly capable of looking at the other side of the coin, but the coin just happens to be a little heavy, that's all.

when you’re thinking something, your emotions are mixed up in it. And you’re still inside your ‘feeling at the time.’ But once you put the situation outside of yourself by using words, you can judge the situation from an observer’s perspective. Rationally.

Usually before a dream becomes reality, we tend to think we’ll wish for nothing else if only the dream is realised. Imagine how you’d feel if you always remembered that your dream has already been fulfilled. Everything that comes after would be like a lovely bonus.

When we’re sinking in water, it can be a relief to feel the ground beneath our feet, the rock bottom, because we know we can kick against it to rise again. But if you can’t feel the ground in life, the fear can be overwhelming. So maybe it’s good to find your rock bottom.

I thought about why I am overly polite to people who are not important to me. It’s because they can hate me at any time. Because they can judge me and resent me for the smallest things I do. Meanwhile, because the people who love me already love me, and there’s a low chance they’ll start to hate me, I get snappy with them.

Aku tidak mengerti kenapa seseorang diperlakukan tidak baik hanya karena ia tidak sesuai dengan standar yang berlaku di masyarakag. Aku juga tidak paham mengapa seorang pribadi harus menyesuaikan dirinya dengan standar yang ditentukan dalam masyarakat. Padahal menurutku pihak yang salah adalag orang yang memandang rendah orang lain yang tidak sesuai dengan standar yang berlaku.

Take control and responsibility for your actions instead of caring so much about what other people think. Right now, your relationship is narrow, like a triangle, and pierces your heart, but at least a dodecahedron is closer to a circle than an octagon, right? The deeper and more varied relationships you have, the rounder your mind will be, and the less the angles will pierce you. You will be just fine.

Psychiatrist: There is no absolute good when it comes to relationships. And it’s perfectly healthy to have disagreements with friends and lovers from time to time. I just hope you learn to differentiate the parts from the whole. Just because you like one thing about a person, you don’t need to like everything about them. And just because you don’t like one thing about a person, it doesn’t mean the person as a whole isn’t worth your time.

It was also revealed that the reason I am cruel to others is because I have low-self-esteem. Because I don’t love myself, I am unable to understand those who do love me in spite of it all, and so I test them. “You love me even when I do this? Or this? Or this?” Even when the other person forgives me, I am unable to understand their forgiveness, and when they give up on me, I torture and console myself with the “fact” that no one could ever love me. That goddamn self-esteem. [...] Looking more closely at myself, there are parts that I've improved on. I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternate throughout life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter. This book, therefore, ends not with answers but with a wish. I want to love and be loved. I want to find a way where I don’t hurt myself. I want to live a life where I say things are good more than things are bad. I want to keep failing and discovering new and better directions. I want to enjoy the tides of feeling in me as the rhythms of life. I want to be the kind of person who can walk inside the vast darkness and find the one fragment of sunlight I can linger in for a long time. Some day, I will.

Whenever my self-consciousness hits overflow, or I feel weighed down by anxiety, sadness, irritation or fear, I think to myself: I have to turn my gaze. I think I've realized that this constant internal fighting is never going to make me feel better about myself... Once I turn my gaze, I see the more interesting aspects of life. And my gaze guides my behavior. And my behavior changes my life. I realize that I can't change all by myself; what makes me really change are the myriad things of the universe that my gaze happens to rest upon.

Me: What should I do to know myself? Psychiatrist: Many people think they’re the foremost authority on themselves, but you should be more sceptical. You’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Do I really know myself well?’ Isn’t it really like touching an elephant’s leg in the dark and thinking it’s a tree trunk? Me: What should I be aiming for? Psychiatrist: To see all things three-dimensionally. Me: You’re right, so right. I think when you look at as many sides of a person as possible, you stop disliking them. I’ve thought about how I should be more like that.

The problem is, of course, my self-esteem. I look down on myself so much that I try to gain self-validation through the eyes of others. But because that’s not a validation that I am able to accept, there’s a limit to how satisfying it can be, and I become bored of it. Which is why I go looking for someone else, and ultimately why I think someone liking me cannot in itself satisfy me. I’m devastated if someone I like doesn’t like me, and devastated when someone does end up loving me; either way, I am looking at myself through the eyes of another. In the end, I’m torturing myself.

You put a lot of stock in what other people think. It’s because your satisfaction with yourself is so low. But your life is your life, your body is your body – and you have responsibility over it. Right now, you don’t process the input that comes to you through a mechanism of rationality or mediation, you go straight to the extreme. Self-surveillance isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there is so much you can do with the input, such as rationalising or finding a different way to think about things – but you only do one thing with it. There can be so many reasons for something, but you’re so focused on the result of it that you don’t see the reasons. You keep focusing on, I’m sad, I want to cry, I’m angry, which only amplifies these emotions.

Ik voel een steek in mijn hart als ik aan haar denk en ik wil niet dat het voelt als medelijden, dus ik heb besloten het te zien als liefde. Als liefde uitmondt in medelijden, kun je daar niets aan doen.

Because the human heart, even when it wants to die, quite often wants at the same time to eat some tteokbokki, too.

Whwn you're having a hard time, it's natural to feel like you're having the hardest time in the world. And it's not selfish to feel that way. Just because certain conditions in your life are relatively better, it doesn't mean you're better off in general.