Winning essays from 2023 KAISTian Failure Story Contest
Hyein Jeong (School of Electrical Engineering of KAIST)
The idea of all things being empty and the fact that success and failure depends on one’s perception does not mean that one should try to self-justify everything, become complacent with reality, and make no effort whatsoever. Nor does it mean that we should consider all bad things as positive events. It means that nothing in the world is absolutely positive or absolutely negative. The main lesson is to not torture oneself by deeming empty things that are beyond one’s control as ‘definite failures.’