Seunghee You

                                                                                                                           

   



 Having lived through my twenties and now preparing for the final stage of that decade, I find myself increasingly reflecting on the meaning of maturity. This is because I have begun to notice, more often than before, moments in which my way of seeing, sensing, and thinking changes through the life I have accumulated so far.

For instance, I used to go to the public bathhouse routinely, but after my niece was born, I began going there with her, now in the role of an aunt. In that familiar place, I felt emotions entirely different from those I had known before becoming an aunt. Likewise, although I had frequently visited exhibitions while studying art, I had never experienced a moment of deep emotional resonance in front of an artwork—until just a few days ago, standing before a large-scale work by Lee Ufan. Perhaps these subtle shifts are what we call maturity. Maturity is a degree of skill formed through change. Although my own level of such skill is not yet deep, it is undoubtedly accumulating, little by little.

As time passes and age advances, the situations and environments one encounters inevitably bring about change, and these changes train a person. In other words, one eventually reaches moments when what was once incomprehensible begins to make sense. It seems that human beings can only come to understand certain things after time has passed, after they have grown older, and after they have lived through experience.

In contemporary society, the concept of numbers—or quantity—has largely been converted into money. As expressed in common phrases such as “time is money,” numbers are often understood in terms of efficiency, value, or economic worth. As a result, it has become difficult to reflect on the meaning of accumulated time that gives rise to a life shaped by experience and maturity. Each year, the number of candles placed on a birthday cake matters less than the extravagant decorations of an expensive cake itself.