There is a traditional Korean gourd ladle—its rim worn smooth, its body simple yet full of quiet dignity.
A respected monk once wrote:
“Because we know how to fill, we also know how to empty.
Because we know how to empty, we know how to fill again.
Having learned the wisdom of emptying, we are ready to receive new life.”
I remember how deeply those words moved me. They carry an infinite meaning.
Material things are gathered only to be lost. Life itself comes and goes.
In that sense, life is much like a ladle.
The essential question is this: What do we choose to fill it with?
And then, equally important: How do we empty it?
Do we fill it with clear spring water from a mountain valley—or with murky water from the gutter?
And once we have drawn that clear water, do we share it with family, neighbors, and friends?
Or do we store it away, sipping it alone in secret?
There is a couple I have never forgotten.
They were hardworking people. The wife, in particular, had an intense desire for wealth and labored tirelessly. To earn and accumulate money was, for them, like a lifelong wrestling match.
By the time they reached their sixties, they seemed to have achieved much.
A luxurious home, one of the most expensive cars, even a multi-story commercial building in a bustling area of New York—by all appearances, they were a successful first-generation immigrant family.
Yet, when one has obtained everything one desires, what follows is often a kind of emptiness.
Over the years, I heard troubling news: the wife had begun frequenting gambling houses, borrowing money from friends and former classmates, trying to sustain losses that had quietly grown.
I often think of the husband, perhaps because I feel the deep pain of his childhood.
A few years after Korea’s liberation, at the age of six, he crossed the 38th parallel with his parents. In the chaos, they were chased by guards, and he lost his mother.
His father, desperate to find his wife, returned north, leaving the boy with relatives. They made a promise to meet again at the gate of Namdaemun Market in Seoul.
Every evening, as the sun set in the western sky, the boy would look toward the north, waiting—alone—for his parents.
He waited ten months.
He waited ten years.
But his father never came.
For a child, what greater sorrow could there be?
This, in truth, is not just his story. It is the story of countless families divided by history—of brothers, uncles, and grandparents who lived through the pain of separation.
From a psychological perspective, a lack of love in early childhood often transforms into an excessive desire for material things.
In other words, the human longing for love can be replaced by a longing for possessions.
Perhaps that is why he chose a partner who shared an equally strong attachment to wealth.
Tragically, this couple knew how to fill—but not how to empty.
And in the end, life forced them to empty in a way that brought pain.
If we can both fill and empty as we go through life, there is a certain grace in it. That is the proper way of living.
In youth, we are busy filling.
But if we have not learned how to empty, then in later years, we must.
At thirty, forty, even fifty, when energy is strong and ambition is high, what we fill our lives with may not always be pure.
Yet if we learn to empty what is unclean, we make room again for fresh, living water.
There is joy in filling.
But there is also a quiet joy in emptying.
Consider this:
When we truly empty, life often returns to us tenfold, even twentyfold.
Such is the quiet truth of living.