In the Corean language, we have a word called "여유", pronounced "Yuh-Yoo". If you look into the root of the word, it's actually a combination of two Chinese characters that mean "left over",餘, and "plentiful",裕, respectively. I really can't think of a good English counterpart, as "spare time" doesn't quite catch the meaning and "gaining luxury in life" gives the wrong impression of greed. For now, please humor me and let me use a working definion of, oh I dunno... how about... "peace of mind"? :)

Well, so you ask why the hell do I bring this word up? It's because we see soooo many of us that are living lives without it. That, of course, includes the good ol' struggling yours truly. ;) It seems like the first thing that happens when we don't actually have 여유 in life is tht we end up working for time and time does not work for us. So, naturally, we end up feeling like we don't have enough time to do all the things we want to do. One of the biggest problems that can result from this is that we may no longer feel like we have the time to care for other people. We find ourselves flashing the "too busy" flag without realizing what kind of effect that may have on others. Then we tend to shrivel up and isolate ourselves from them, claiming that we need to "get our lives back in order". But in reality we don't end up spending time getting our lives back in order, we simply try to patch together a short term fix only to fall right back into the perpetual chasing game where we're fugitives of time.

As time goes by, we become more and more lonely and may eventually lose any sense of satisfaction from life, and perhaps even display symptoms of depression. This is a spiral of doom that nobody should have to go down. It seems rather ironic that the fact that we're spending all the time looking after our own selves and not others' ends up making us feel even more miserable, doesn't it?

I don't remember who said it, but there is a saying that goes something like "give, when you're most in need" and I think that really catches the essence. It is probably the time when we think we're most busy that we should open your mind up and proactively offer help to our closest friends. It's one thing to passively tell them that they should let us know when they need help, and quite another to proactively offer a helping hand before they have to muster up the courage to do so. And if we can do that, I think we're well on our way to having a true 여유 in our lives. Ah~ Let's all giddy up and act on this today!!!! Waddaya say??? :D