The Scariest Part Of A Depressive Episode Isn't Crying Due To The Intense Sadness And Pain, But When

Like a candle

set aside in wait;

Etiolated,

no more than ornamental.

Its life comes to a stand still.

No purpose,

yet—

hopeful.

The true flames

erase time.

They engulf the deepest of feelings

one can conceive.

Defying common laws,

negativity

turns into bright flames.

Scorching hot...

...happiness?

Blinded by reason

follow the heat

slowly abating in corners of your body.

There,

lies truth.

There,

lie your answers.

Happiness is not far away.

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➵ Jibaku shounen Hanako-kun

➵ Toilet-bound Hanako-kun

⊱ Hanako-kun (Yugi Amane)

⊱ Yugi Tsukasa

⊱ Nene Yashiro

⊱ Kou Minamoto

⟿ Author's Official Art

──────⊱◈◈◈⊰────────────⊱◈◈◈⊰─────

“it was a cry / meant for no one / but the moon—”

— Sujata Bhatt, from “The Langur Coloured Night”, Collected Poems

Level 1 / Lesson 2: 잘 and 못

안녕, 친구들! Hi, friends! Welcome to this next lesson! In previous lessons, we learned how to make affirmative and negative sentences. In other words, we know how to say that something is/does something, and that something is not/ does not do something. In this lesson, I want to teach you how to say you are good/bad at something, or that you can/can’t do something. This is a good way to talk about your interests and abilities! Perhaps this could also help you ask for help if you struggle with something :). Let’s start!

잘하다: to do well 못하다: to do badly

Let’s start by taking a look at a verb that ends with 하다, such as 수영하다 (to swim):

수영 = swimming 

하다 = to do

Notice how 수영 is essentially a noun–it is the action itself of swimming. It is something you do, hence why 하다 is attached to it. You are doing the swimming, if that makes sense. You can even say 수영을 하다 to mean the same thing–the object particle here suggests are are doing an action of some sort.

So how can you say that you are good at swimming? It’s pretty simple: just take the noun for swimming, 수영, and attach 잘하다 to it. Don’t forget to conjugate 잘하다 also!

수영 + 잘하다 - 다 + 여요 = 수영 잘 해요 = I / you / he / she / they swim(s) well

This can also be translated to “I [or any noun] can swim.”

Conversely, we can use the verb 못하다 the same way to mean “I cannot swim” or “I am bad at swimming”:

수영 + 못하다 - 다 + 여요 = 수영 못 해요 = I cannot swim

Let’s look at another example using the verb 공부하다 (to study). Here, 공부 would be the noun “a study” or “studying” Again, you can think of it as “to do studying,” if that makes sense. Thus, you can use the same formula to say you are good or bad at studying:

공부 + 잘하다 - 다 + 여요 = 공부 잘 해요 = I am good at studying

공부 + 못하다 - 다 + 여요 = 공부 못 해요 = I am bad at studying

Here’s another example: 이해하다 (to understand)

이해 = understanding / comprehension

이해 잘 해요 = I understand / I understand well

이해 못 해요 = I do not understand

Something that may be useful for y’all is to say which languages you can and cannot speak. For example:

한국어를 잘 해요 = I can speak Korean / I speak Korean well

한국어를 못 해요 = I cannot speak Korean / I do not speak Korean well

영어를 잘 해요 = I can speak English / I speak English well

영어를 못 해요 = I cannot speak English / I do not speak English well

*Note that although the verb 말하다 means to speak, we just use the verb 하다 to talk about speaking languages, since it’s inferred that the action in question is “speaking.”

Not too confusing I hope :). But there are many verbs that do not end in 하다. So how are we supposed to say that we can / cannot do those actions? It’ actually perhaps a little simpler than above! Let’s look at the verb  (to go). 

Simply add 잘 or 못 in front of 가다 to say you can or cannot go:

잘 가요 = I can go (this is what it could possibly translate to, but this sentence is usually used to mean “goodbye”–it could be translated as “go well”)

못 가요 = I can’t go (perhaps your parents won’t let you go to a party or something lol)

Here’s another example: 부르다 (to call / to sing). In this case, we’ll say it means “to sing.”

잘 불러요 = I sing well

못 불러요 = I cannot sing

Interestingly, there’s another word that means “to sing”: 노래하다. Let’s give this one a try too, shall we? It works the same way as the previously 하다 verbs do:

노래 = song

노래 잘 해요 = I can sing / I sing well

노래 못 해요 = I cannot sing / I sing badly

There are also some verbs that look like this:

춤을 추다 = to dance 

춤 = a dance (noun) 

추다 = to dance (verb)

In this case, I don’t think you can say “춤을 하다.” You should just say “춤을 춰요” to mean “I dance.” 

Similarly to how we put 잘 or 못 right before a verb for the 하다 verbs, we can do the same for verbs like these:

춤을 잘 춰요 = I can dance / I dance well

춤을 못 춰요 = I cannot dance / I dance poorly

Let’s look at another example with the verb 꿈을 꾸다 (to dream)

꿈 = dream (noun) 

꾸다 = to dream (action)

꿈을 잘 꿔요 = I dream well 

꿈을 못 꿔요 = I cannot dream / I don’t dream well 

(Not really sure when you’d say something like this lol. Maybe when you’re describing whether you had a good or bad dream? I just wanted to use this for the sake of showing the grammar lol.)

I think that’s about it for this lesson! Hope it helped you out! If you study hard, you’ll be able to proudly say “한국어를 잘 해요” one day! As always, questions are welcome, so ask away if you have any! Thanks for studying with me and see you later!! 안녕!

I think millennials don’t want to have children right now because they’ve seen their mothers (baby boomers) make up for what they missed out on from becoming young parents. The ones I’ve seen have failed miserably at doing so.

Loneliness is a Dangerous Thing

‘Everyone knows there are forms of cruelty which can injure a man’s life without injuring his body. They are such as deprive him of a certain form of food necessary to the life of the soul.’                     - Simone Weil, The Need for Roots

Rootlessness and homelessness, though similar in nature, are also quite different. A person who is rootless may very well have a home, but does not have a sense of belonging, they identify themselves as ‘the other’. 

Since the end of World War II, migration has increased significantly with people opting to set up their life somewhere new, whether this be for a job, education, religion, or whatever opportunity this may provide. A person disentangles themselves from the ties and bonds that they have with one place and form this relationship somewhere new… this is now home.

But home for you may not always be home for the new family that you set up. I have mentioned this before in another post so I won’t go into it in too much detail, but when looking at those with extremist and ‘radical’ thoughts, we find that they are often children of those who have migrated. The parents have chosen to build home in a new foreign land and build a relationship with that place, but the relationship is not so straight forward. This relationship is a half way house between assimilating and holding onto one’s culture; the migrant chooses which parts of the new culture to adopt and which parts of their old culture to hold onto. This might vary from eating and drinking habits, clothing, social life, it could be anything. 

The child of the migrant however, having not chosen but instead having been brought up with this conflict between the two cultures feels lost. This is something I have thought about for a long time, but Arendt put it into the words I have been searching for for so long. 

The child feels a sense of rootlessness. 

Arendt argues that those who feel rootless or homeless will seek out a home for themselves at any cost, which can have disastrous consequences. 

She states that for an individual who feels rootless and homeless, often with this comes the feeling of having an existence that is not meaningful or fruitful. To find this sense of belonging, individuals often turn to exclusionary movements and groups, which actually only increases the feeling of alienation and rootlessness. Now they are in a group that only contains people such as themselves, perhaps from one place, class, religion, etc. all together feeling like outsiders, because of the absence of others of a different background. 

Arendt says that uprootedness has been ‘the curse of the modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution’.

Loneliness is a dangerous thing. When a person is lonely, when they feel their roots are not in any ground but sort of drifting from place to place, a person is not themselves. Who are we, after all, without a background against us? Just an entity, perhaps? 

‘To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul.’

She finally voiced  her deepest desires in vivid detail, she just disguised it all as a distant dream.

- G.L. Angelone

“I’ve got nothing to say but it’s okay.”

— The Beatles, Good Morning, Good Morning

Everything you did to me, I remember.

Mama, I made it out of your home alive, raised by the voices in my head.

— Warsan Shire, from “Extreme Girlhood,” Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head

I found this on Pinterest and am crying for some reason-