A 5-Minute Video I Stumbled Upon

About a month ago, YouTube's weird algorithm led me to stumble upon this video.
Since then, I've watched it several more times and eventually saved it so I could revisit it whenever the thought crossed my mind.

It's only about 5 minutes long, so I highly recommend giving it a watch if you're reading this.

After watching this video, you can't help but feel how trivial and insignificant human life is in the grand scheme of eternity. I've been reading Sapiens and The Astronomer Who Doesn't Look at Stars lately, both of which carry similar messages—so these thoughts have been amplified in my mind recently. It's not that I've never thought about death before, but in daily life, I tend to forget about it. And because of that, I stress over small things, scrambling and struggling as if they're life or death. Small things don't feel small anymore—they come crashing down like waves ready to swallow me whole. But in the end, my achievements and my mistakes will all be forgotten.

When I think about it this way, life feels pretty meaningless.

Confessions of a Planner

I've always been proactive about life.

I've moved with purpose and goals in mind. In my teens, I planned for my twenties. Now in my twenties, I'm building toward my thirties. I'm a planner by nature.

But sometimes, it's hard.

Life spinning like a hamster wheel. The same things every day. Moments of joy, sure—but the familiar wave of melancholy always returns.
Sometimes I cry on the drive home. Feeling pathetic, wondering what the point of all this is… what's the purpose?

We all die in the end, right?

…

Why do we struggle so hard?

What It Means to Live in Korea

It gets worse when I think about the realities of living in Korea. No matter how hard I work, I'll never be able to afford an apartment in Gangnam—not even if I worked my entire life. (For reference, we're talking anywhere from $700K to $3.5M USD… yeah.)

Thoughts like this make life feel hollow. What's the point of trying hard? What's the point of not trying?

So, Optimistic Nihilism

But there's a reason the video is called Optimistic Nihilism, not just Nihilism. It doesn't matter if my existence is insignificant in the universe.

I can grow a universe within myself. I can become the universe.

If I take care of my body, accumulate small experiences, and show love to this world—that alone makes life meaningful and fulfilling. It's okay if no one else acknowledges it.

I know. And that's enough.

I believe that what I know matters the most in my own world. That's why I keep pushing every day. Even now…

My Favorite Line

"If this is our one shot at life, there is no reason not to have fun and live as happily as possible. And making other people's lives better is a nice bonus."

This is my favorite line from the Optimistic Nihilism video.

Every time I hear it, something inside me stirs—I don't know exactly what, but I feel the urge to do something.

I want to stop weighing practical conditions and postponing choices, and just take bold leaps instead.

I feel like I could shake off all the resentment and negativity that's been quietly building up inside me, like dusting off an old shelf. I want to fill my future with excitement and anticipation, rather than regret and self-blame.

Do Your Best Each Day, Let Life Flow as It Will

Another one of my favorite sayings is this: life is about "giving your best every single day, but letting a lifetime flow as it will."

Even if we set goals in life, there's a 99.9% chance things won't go as planned. In other words, almost nothing works out the way we expect. Same goes for me…

(Job changes, big corporations, startups, studying data science, design, product planning, programming…? You think all of that was planned? Lol.)

But the greatest privilege a human being can have is the ability to live each day to the fullest.

In that sense, I want to be someone who lives for the future rather than the past. Someone who, despite the emptiness, keeps filling their own world a little more each day.