Family Love & Communication
When we understand and consider each other, family love gets stronger. Learn the way of communication to add more happiness to your family.
Love Is Love When Expressed
Love takes the most important part of our life. It is not too much to say that love is the essence of life. However, love cannot be seen, smelled, or touched. Therefore, you cannot physically take your love out of your heart and show it to your loved one, or put it nicely in a gift box and hand it to them. Then, when do we feel loved, and how can we convey our love? The formula for love is “heart × expressing.” When love is expressed, it comes to the surface and becomes amazing medicine that changes the world. Although love is a hundred, if its expression is zero, it is useless. No matter how close you are to…
Eyes, Where Heart to Heart Connections Are Made
“The beauty of a woman is seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides.” Audrey Hepburn “The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with the advantage that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is understood all the world over.” Ralph Waldo Emerson Windows allow people to see the outside from the inside and the inside from the outside. Even if there are walls all around, if there is a window, it lets sunlight and breeze in, making the house pleasant. Our body also has an organ that is like a window. It is the eyes. Eyes play a very important role in our body. Among the sensory…
Think Before You Speak
There is a saying, “Pay more attention to the words coming out of your own mouth, than to the words coming out of others’ mouths.” Like this, there are many quotes about the importance of words in every country where language is used as a means of communication. Words are the best tool to exchange thoughts and information. However, on the other hand, words can also hurt each other’s feelings and cause misunderstandings and disputes; humans have learned this lesson through their experiences accumulated over a long time although their languages are different. Conversation is interactive communication. It means that there is a speaker and a listener. When we toss a ball to each other, the ball can go a…
How to Negotiate for a Good Relationship
“Almost everything is negotiable.” This is a quote from Herb Cohen, an American negotiation expert. When it comes to a negotiation, most people would imagine an intense and close match for important issues such as an international negotiation and a salary negotiation. However, negotiation is not a special mission just for foreign diplomats or businessmen. Narrowing differences in opinions such as negotiating the price of a product at the market, deciding the lunch menu with a co-worker, or dividing household chores with family members, or deciding the amount of pocket money for a child is a type of negotiation. Although we don’t necessarily sit facing with someone at the table in a formal way, our daily life is a series…
About What We See and Hear
A mother happened to see her child imitating a mourner. Being shocked, the mother moved from near a graveyard to a house next to a market. Then, her child started imitating a merchant. So the mother packed up their stuff again and moved to a house near a school. From then on her child imitated reading books, and the mother was satisfied. This is the origin of the Chinese idiom 孟母三遷之敎 (meng mu san qian zhi jiao), meaning Mencius’ mother moves three times (for her son’s education), which contains the message that men are much influenced by what they see and hear. Even a woman who used to like watching breathtaking scary movies and listening to loud music with uneven…
Neither Hurt Nor Be Hurt
A wound is an injury or a damaged area of the body. Not only the body but also the mind has wounds. Unlike wounds on the body, wounds in the mind are invisible, so they are likely to be overlooked. Visible wounds can be treated with medication, but it is hard to heal the wounds in the mind on your own. As a poet said, “Is there a soul without a wound?” everyone gets hurt at least once in their lifetime. Conversely, everyone hurts others during their life. It is not an exaggeration to say that life is a process of constantly hurting, being hurt, and recovering in the relationships with others. It is easy to hurt, but it takes…
A Habit, the Beginning of Change
From the moment you wake up in the morning until you fall asleep at night, you do countless actions. However, you do not worry about how to wash, in what order to wear clothes, and how to use spoons when eating. The body moves before the head because those have grown into habits. A habit is an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary. It is not too much to say that life is a continuation of habits; our daily life consists of various habits such as sleeping habits, eating habits, exercise habits, language habits, driving habits, and consumption habits. It is said, “We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act, but…
A Good Distance Helps Maintain a Good Relationship
On a winter day with cold wind blowing, a group of hedgehogs gathered together to share heat. However, the closer they got to each other, the more their sharp spines hurt one another. Not being able to stand the pain, they had to take one step back. The hedgehog’s dilemma which came from this story is a metaphor about the psychology of humans with a desire to form an intimacy with others and to keep some distance at the same time. Men grow up under the parents’ care at home, make friends at school, and work with co-workers in their workplaces. In other words, they live, constantly building relationships with their parents, spouse, relatives, friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. While having…
Living Room with Family Culture
A house usually consists of bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living room, and each space has a different purpose. In general, the bedrooms are used for sleeping and keeping clothes and belongings; the bathroom is a room for washing and doing the family’s needs; and the kitchen is where the family cooks and eats. Then, what is the living room for? The living room in the center of the house is used in various ways as a space to receive guests and a place where family members use together. Above all, it is a place where all family members gather. People instinctively want to feel a sense of belonging, and in order to satisfy that desire, they need…
Happy Home Is Full of Humor
At a funeral in Dublin, Ireland, the crowd of mourners burst out laughing in a solemn atmosphere. It was because the daughter of the deceased played his funny pre-recorded message according to his request of making the mourners laugh. The deceased, who always smiled even while suffering from a chronic illness, presented laughter to the people around him even at his funeral. As Charles Dickens said, “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor,” the utility value of humor is getting more attention as life is difficult. A sense of humor has become a virtue that leaders must possess, a witty talent is favored by companies, and humorous advertisements generate more sales. Humor is…
Social Media Security as Important as Locking Your Doors
Social media is an online platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people by sharing information and communicating freely, such as Facebook, Twitter, Kakao Story, Instagram, Band, and YouTube. As the spread of smart phones increases, social media became available regardless of time and place, so it has become an inseparable part of the lives of modern people. A Korean web portal surveyed 693 members on the “Use Pattern of Social Media and the Status of Its Utilization.” It reports that 91.3% of the respondents are using social media, and that their purposes were for communication with others (63.2%), diverse information and trend research (60.7%), relieving boredom (46.9%), recording and sharing their daily life…
Small and Trivial Things Have the Butterfly Effect!
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost. For want of the shoe, the horse was lost. For want of the horse, the rider was lost. For want of the rider, the battle was lost. For want of the battle, the kingdom was lost. And all from the want of a horseshoe nail.” It is an English folk song about a kingdom being lost because of a want of a horseshoe nail. How can one small nail ruin a giant kingdom? Although it is somewhat extreme, it shows that small and trivial things can lead to massive consequences as a result of chain reactions. People generally tend to take small and trivial things lightly. People take a matter that…
Have a Happy Morning!
At the question, “What word comes up in your mind when you think of a morning?” some may say sunshine, dew, stretch, refreshing, and opportunity, and some others may say haste, oversleeping, lateness, busy, and tired. The words people associated with morning show a rough picture of how they actually spend their mornings. On New Year’s Day every year, sunrise spots across the country are crowded with people who want to start the new year by watching the first sunrise. The beginning of a year is the first day of the New Year, and the beginning of a day is the morning. A good morning is the key to a good day; because it is more likely that a happy…
The House Shines, So Does My Mind
“What is a real hassle among all housework?” “What is physically the toughest housework?” Gallup Korea questioned Korean housewives on domestic work and found that cleaning ranked no.1 for both of the two questions mentioned above. In a nutshell, house cleaning is recognized as a tiresome work and a hassle. So, people would have ever wished that someone else has already cleaned up every nook and corner of the house when they return home or imagined that someone would suddenly appear and dust off the shelves, sweep the floors, and mop until everything shines while they’re resting. A strong detergent that removes dirt by just a gentle rub, a disposable damp house cloth, a vacuum cleaner that takes in fine…
Family Trusts Each Other
Someone lost his life after drinking what someone else handed him; people remit a large amount of money, deceived at a call that pretends to be a public agency. As fraud and tricks prevail in our communities, the expression, “a good neighbor,” is put to shame today. People distrust even their neighbors and lock their doors securely without knowing who is living next door. Since they can’t trust each other, they even raise their guard against a small favor of others and become suspicious of them first, and so 24-hour running CCTVs are installed everywhere. Thus, people do not trust one another, and family members are no exception. For example, some people place GPS tracking devices on their spouses’ cars,…
Language Etiquette Begins at Home
There is joke that if you say, “I’m a boy,” with a wry look and in an aggressive tone, you mean that “I’m a bad boy”; and if you say, “I’m a boy,” with a smile and in a soft tone, you mean that “I’m a good boy.” The reason they sound totally different though they are the same words is the difference in the vessels that contain the words. When you set the table for a guest, the taste of food is important, and you can’t help but care about the plates that contain the food. If the size, shape, and color of plates harmonize with the food, it looks more delicious. But if the plates are dirty, broken,…
Smiley Faces, Happy Home
The human face is capable of creating more than 7,000 expressions. Among those many, the expression that makes you look the youngest and most beautiful and makes you and other people happy is of course a smiley face. When you frown, your eyes and the corners of your mouth are pulled downward, and your forehead and the space between the eyebrows become narrow; you don’t look well. However, when you smile, your eyes, the corners of your mouth, and the cheek muscles are lifted; and the eyebrows and the forehead spread outward; your face becomes bright. The facial muscles when smiling and frowning move in the opposite direction. There is a Korean proverb that goes, “You can’t spit on a…
Time Is Gold, We think time is gold especially when we spend time with our families
A woman in her fifties goes to see the doctor to get the result of her medical checkup and is told that she has nine months to live. The woman is at a loss for words by the unexpected result. This is a scene from a viral video. Actually, the nine months given her to live are not the time she can live, but the time she can spend with her family. Assuming that human lifespan is eighty-five years, the remaining time for a fifty-three-year-old housewife is thirty-two years. If you think about the time for work, time for sleep, time for TV or smartphone, and the time for herself, the time she has for her family is just nine…
Family Is Not Coincidental, but Inevitable!
Family is a group of people who share genes biologically and have the same or related blood types. Since all cells of the body are provided with nutrition and oxygen through blood, blood is the basis of life. Family shares the blood. Family relationship is stronger than any other relationships. There is a saying about family cohesion: “Blood is thicker than water.” The love for family members cannot be cut off. It is natural for people separated from their families to make efforts to find them, unless they left their families by their own will. People say the relationship between parents and children is destined by heaven. Life is a series of choices, but parents, siblings, and children are not…
Brotherly Love Is the Best Filial Piety for the Parents
Yi Seong-gye established Joseon Dynasty in Korea and became the first king called King Taejo. His fifth son, Yi Bang-won, was very ambitious. As one of his half-brothers became the crown prince, Yi Bang-won got furious and killed the half-brother and another half-brother as well. Then King Taejo’s second son sat on the throne, but this time there was a conflict between the brothers born of the same mother—Yi Bang-won and Yi Banggan, the fourth son. The former one is called the First Strife of Princes, and the latter is called the Second Strife of Princes. The tragedy from family discord, which took place at the beginning of Joseon Dynasty, often occurs in this age, too. Among the top forty…