I sometimes joke that I make my living off Confucius. I earned my doctorate on the interpretation of the "Analects," and I have spent my career researching and teaching Confucius and the "Analects" at university. For me, Confucius is not merely an object of study. He is someone who has lived alongside me for a long time, and at times an old conversation partner who makes me reexamine my own thinking.
Over the years I have written several books on the "Analects." I wrote one for elementary school students, and others for high school and university students. I wrote one for specialist scholars, and one that reads the "Analects" from a leader's perspective. I also published a translation that readers of several generations could share. For a long time I have wanted to write an "Analects" that reads differently depending on the reader's age.
The same sentence lands differently at 10 than it does at 20. Read at 30, it feels different again, and after 40 and 50, entirely different passages take hold. This is why classics survive. The book stays the same while the reader changes. When the person changes, the meaning of the same sentence changes. Now I want to begin an "Analects" for people in their 30s.
How should I describe one's 30s? Several years have passed since these readers entered the workforce, so they are no longer newcomers who know nothing. They meet many people at work and experience successes and failures, large and small. The shape of the organization, invisible at first, gradually comes into view. They develop an eye for people. Yet oddly, their worries do not diminish. In some cases they multiply. They wonder whether to keep doing the work they are doing now. They consider changing jobs. They worry about whether the expertise they have built is enough. Watching colleagues advance faster than they do can make them impatient. As junior colleagues arrive, they feel responsibilities they never had before. Life outside the office grows complicated. Their parents are growing older, and questions about marriage and family arise. Financial responsibilities grow heavier, and there are more decisions they must make themselves about how to shape the life ahead. Where students have clear goals such as exams or landing a job, the 30s bring far more choices with no right answer.
So I think of the 30s as a time when people have already experienced a great deal but are still building the direction of their lives. They know something of the world, yet they still waver. Did Confucius not say that only at 40 did he reach the stage of being free from doubt, what he called buhok? The 30s, likewise, are not yet solid enough to resolve every problem. I thought this might be a period in which the "Analects" could serve as a book worth talking with.
Confucius, who lived some 2,500 years ago, cannot give direct answers to the problems of today's office workers in their 30s. He lived in an age very different from ours. So let me state this plainly from the outset: I am not presenting old stories as today's correct answers. Different times bring different circumstances. The family relations and political institutions of Confucius's era cannot be applied directly to the present. Some of the values naturally accepted then warrant reconsideration from today's perspective. Even so, certain problems people encounter in living are strikingly similar across the ages. In the end, the question is what kind of person one will be. It is precisely at this point that I wanted to connect Confucius's words to today's 30-somethings — not as answers, but as material for thought that lets us see our current concerns a little differently.
For more than 20 years I have steadily written pieces on blogs and Facebook that take a passage from a classic and connect it to a present-day problem. Classics are old sentences. But placed in today's context, they raise entirely different questions. I find that process enjoyable. This series begins from such writing. I gathered what I have written and selected, by theme, material that might connect with life in one's 30s. Of course, I am not in my 30s now. The era in which I lived my 30s and the era today's 30-somethings live in differ greatly. Explaining today's 30-somethings using only my own experience could be dangerous.
I have taught students at university for many years. I have watched those students graduate, take jobs and grow through their working lives. Many of them have stayed in touch after graduation, so I have had chances to hear about their workplace concerns and the changes in their lives. Some years ago, working at a state institution outside the university, I spent a little over three years alongside some 70 young employees. I cannot claim to have understood all of their difficulties, but I tried to. I caught at least a glimpse of what today's younger generation worries about. Still, I do not claim with confidence that I truly know the lives of office workers in their 30s, because I am not living that life myself.
So I am not someone who tells people in their 30s the answers to life. Rather, as someone who has lived a little earlier and watched young people grow up close for a long time, I am simply someone offering a thought: "What if we considered this as well?" Above all, I do not want to judge the lives of the 30-somethings who read this. I am only someone who takes an interest in their concerns, wishes them well and cheers for their continued growth.
I will write so that these pieces are as easy to read as possible. I hope readers who have not studied the "Analects" will not feel burdened by classical Chinese or specialist knowledge. In the main text, I will keep difficult academic debates to a minimum and recast the stories of Confucius and his disciples as matters of today's workplaces, relationships, growth and careers. Even so, I do not want to leave out the original text of the "Analects" entirely, because some readers may find themselves wondering, "What did Confucius actually say?" So I plan to append the original passages discussed in each piece, along with translations and Korean readings. At first, reading only the contemporary story is fine. The originals are there for the moment you want to read further.
As I write, certain people come to mind first: readers between the ages of 30 and 35. My daughter is among them. Those who work all day and read for a short while after coming home. Those who feel they are doing fine and then suddenly grow anxious about their future. Those who feel their friends are settling into place one by one while they alone have yet to find a direction. Those weighing a promotion or a move to another company. Those who, with junior colleagues now below them, newly realize they are in a position to influence someone. Those who feel a different kind of responsibility as they watch their parents age. And those who have at least once doubted whether the success society speaks of is really the same as the life they want.
I hope such readers encounter even a single sentence that lets them pause and think about their own lives. You do not have to agree with Confucius. You may say, "I think differently." Forming your own thinking that way is the reason to read the classics.
People in their 30s have a great deal of time ahead. The work you do now may not be your life's work. Your current company may not be your last. What worries you now may look like a very small problem a few years from now. And something you cannot imagine today may enter your life. In your 30s there is still much to learn and much that can be changed. There is time to fail and time to start again. Ten years from now you may be an entirely different person. That change will not be merely a higher title and a larger salary. It is enough to become someone whose eye for people has deepened, who can govern their emotions a little better, who can comfortably acknowledge others' strengths, who knows how to turn words into action, who grows more careful rather than less when power arrives, and who does not lose what matters to them even in success. That, in the end, is what I will keep returning to.
Let me imagine 10 years from now. The person reading this has passed 40. One has become a team leader; another works in a new field. Someone has left salaried work to start out on their own. Someone has married and become a parent; someone else enjoys living alone and walks a path of their own. They are wrestling with concerns entirely unlike today's. Then they happen upon this writing again. Reading a few passages, they may smile and think, "So these were my worries back then." And if they remember even a sentence or two as "those words gave me a little strength at the time," I could ask for nothing more. I do not want to claim that a few passages from a classic change a person's life. Life is not that simple. But there certainly are cases in which a sentence encountered at a particular time stays in the mind and becomes a small standard at an important moment. I hope some sentence here can play that role.
Passages in the classics stay as they are, but people keep changing. And when a changed person reads that classic again, they meet an entirely different classic. What I write here is not a finished answer. It is only one conversation I have had with Confucius while looking at today's 30-somethings. Reading it again a few years from now, I am sure I will find things I want to revise. That, too, is natural, because learning never ends.
Finally, there is one sentiment I want to convey clearly to the readers of these pieces. The time ahead of you holds far more possibility than you now imagine. It is all right to be a little late. It is all right to waver now. It is all right not to have found an answer yet. I only hope you keep learning and thinking, respect others and build your life little by little. I hope that 10 years from now you will be freer, sturdier and warmer than you are today. I would be glad if this writing could be a very small companion on that road.
"I sincerely cheer on the present and the years ahead of every 30-something reading this."
About the author
Lee Kang-jae is a Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Seoul National University
Former President, the Korean Classical Studies Association
Former Head of the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Division, National Research Foundation of Korea