Lessons from a Salmon

Every autumn, salmon leave the ocean and return to the rivers. Seeking the birthplace where they began their lives, they swim upstream for hundreds, even thousands of miles. The currents are fierce, and the journey is treacherous. They encounter waterfalls and face attacks from predators. Yet, the salmon never give up. As if guided by an invisible hand, they ultimately reach their home.

It has been over seventy years since I left my hometown around the age of twenty. Now, well into my nineties, as I sit in my homeland reading The Salmon, I cannot help but feel that I, too, am a salmon on its journey back home.

Reading Ahn Do-hyun’s The Salmon, I pondered the reason for a very long time: Why do salmon abandon the comfortable ocean and choose such a perilous river path?

Perhaps it is not merely a biological instinct. That path is a journey of homecoming—a refusal to forget where one came from—and perhaps a final pilgrimage to bring completeness to one's life.

When I think about it, human life closely resembles the journey of the salmon.

In our youth, we venture out into the vast ocean. We study, work, build families, and raise children, swimming tirelessly in the grand sea of the world. During those years, we only look forward. Success and competition matter most. Moving to higher places and exploring a wider world seems to be the ultimate goal of life.

But as we age, our perspective shifts, little by little.

One day, we suddenly find ourselves looking back at the path we have traveled. We begin to ask how we lived rather than what we achieved. We reflect on whom we loved rather than how much we possessed.

Just as salmon seek their birthplace, we feel a desire to return to the essence of life as we reach its later chapters. Childhood memories, the faces of our parents, the sound of the stream back home, and the long-forgotten yearnings come alive once more within our hearts.

Through the salmon, Ahn Do-hyun shares a profound truth:

The most beautiful thing is not to drift away with the current, but to swim against it.

The world always advises us to take the easy path. As we grow old, it tells us to rest, to give up, and that it is now too late. Yet, salmon do not float downstream with the current. Even though it is grueling, they swim against it. Come to think of it, there are salmon like this all around us.

Those who continue to exercise to overcome an illness, those who learn new things to preserve their memory, those who reach out to neighbors to defeat loneliness, and those who choose forgiveness despite carrying deep scars—they are all salmon, swimming up their own unique rivers.

I often think of this when I look at the members of our Bio Senior Group. While many view old age as a period of decline, we learn about health, share the meaning of life, and prepare for a better tomorrow. That is not an act of defying age; it is an act of swimming against meaninglessness.

At last, the salmon arrives home, leaves behind new life, and ends its journey. But that is not the end. It is a beautiful completion, passing its life onto the next generation.

We, too, will stand by the final riverbank of our lives one day. What we leave behind then might not be money or fame. It will likely be a warm word offered to someone, the love we shared, and the memories of making another person's life just a little bit brighter.

Gazing at the salmon, a final thought crosses my mind: Perhaps the value of life lies not in how long we lived, but in how meaningfully we swam against the current.