Hyo Jong Chun

There is a saying in Korea, ‘To observe the entire forest, go to find a highest mountain and climb to the top’. In English translation, “You can’t see the forest for trees”

If someone is in the middle of the forest, he will immediately see what is in front of him. He can see a small portion of forest which is around him, but he will have to assume that the rest of woods will be somewhat alike what is in front of him because of his physical limit of heights. This is describing what our way of seeing and thinking is. Human beings have evolved throughout the history as encountering and overcoming many limitations. People have formed a community and built up the city and culture, and eventually we, humans, have been ruling ever the entire planet. However, we are still not complete under physical and spiritual limitations. As an individual, human is such a fragile being. Facing many cases of natural disasters like storms and earthquakes, I am again thrilled how week and small we are. It also doesn’t seem possible that someone alive in this world has a vision that can penetrating from the past to the future and can answer objectively for the big questions such as where we are from and where we are heading to, and why we are here.

Let’s go back to the saying. Instead of finding the highest mountain for the resolution of mapping out the entire forest, people tend to start filing up rocks, sands, and woods collecting from the nature and building up their own construction relying on their power and will. And then people make an observation on the forest from the constructions they made, and also decide a way to go by assuming where they are from and where they are heading to.