Jeong Yakyong (Dasan)
When I am at my hardest place, what can I still begin?
📝ONGO's Reflection
Dasan spent eighteen years in exile. During those eighteen years, he wrote nearly five hundred books. The time that would have crushed an ordinary person into despair, he turned into the richest of libraries. What Dasan shows us is not how to endure your circumstances, but how to redefine them. The same place of exile becomes a tomb for one person and a study for another. The difference comes down to one thing — whether you find and begin the smallest task you can start from right where you are. Dasan showed this, every single day, for eighteen years.
"Be diligent. Be diligent. Be diligent. This is the one thing I leave you."Jeong Yakyong (Dasan), 與猶堂全書 (Yeoyudang Jeonseo, Letters to His Sons)
🌱Apply It Today
Recall the one thing you find most dissatisfying in your circumstances, and find the smallest task you could begin anew within it, then start it before today ends. Dasan's five hundred books began with the very first page.
