answered by The Great Preface to the Book of Songs
기원전~기원후 초 편찬(모시 서문)
🎬 TODAY'S FILM — IT ASKS THIS
My Mother and Her Guest (1961)
dir. Shin Sang-ok · South Korea
A quiet feeling passes between a widowed young mother and a house guest, yet for the sake of the era's propriety and a child, the two finally swallow that emotion within. Is a love never expressed a failed love, or a love completed in another way? Is restraint the absence of feeling, or its depth?
THE QUESTION THE FILM ASKS
Do I see restrained love as suppressed love, belittling the depth of a heart that governed itself?
THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER · ORIGINAL
發乎情 止乎禮義
📜 THE CLASSIC'S ANSWER
Feeling arises from the heart, yet halts at what is proper.
💡 TL;DR
This line from the Great Preface does not deny feeling.
📝The Classic Answers
This line from the Great Preface does not deny feeling. The heart arises from feeling — love is natural. It only says that such feeling knows to halt at what is proper. I used to mistake restraint for a lack of emotion. Yet a love that chooses not to express itself holds a sincerity no less, and sometimes deeper, than a love that does. When one left alone holds a feeling yet keeps propriety and steps back, that stepping back is not coldness but a care to protect both the other and oneself. I learn that pouring out every feeling is not the only truth. A love that knows how to halt is also love.
— ONGO · Curator
🌱Apply It Today
Weigh whether a feeling you want to express now is for the other or for you, and practice, at times, holding it back.
📖 Classic Source:
The Great Preface to the Book of Songs.
Ancient text in the public domain; rendered and interpreted independently by ONGO.
The film is honored as an equal questioner; its plot is rendered only as a universal dilemma. The classic source is an ancient text (Public Domain), and the reflection is 100% original ONGO content.
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A Bridge Between Eras — the wisdoms this question threads
Reading the new through the old — classics this question awakens.
