Rhee Kun Hoo > Quotes

“Your partner is someone you need to accept, rather than comprehensively understand. Think about this – wasn’t one of the reasons you decided to get married in the first place the sure presence of someone who’d always be on your side? Didn’t you want from marriage someone who would accept you the way you are? Accept your partner, likewise, before you think to complain your partner won’t change. If you continue to stick with your biassed perspective, remain critical and refuse to accept your partner, you’ll always end up creating more conflicts.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Trying to understand another person’s perspective – that’s the beginning of all great love.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“I’ve always explored this question – what causes us so much emotional, psychological suffering? In my experience, there are two major causes. One is regret about the past, the other is anxiety about the future. Both are inevitable, of course, but both need to be tempered. The past cannot be changed, regardless of your regret, and the future cannot be avoided, regardless of your anxiety. What’s worse, these two will keep eating away at the joy you can find, right now, in your life in the present.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“But in all this, there’s a silver lining. This grief that comes with life can also be healed by its smallest pleasures.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Till my last day, it’s always her to whom I want to give the world.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Learning something new gives me immense pleasure, even though someone might wonder what I’m going to do with all this newly acquired knowledge in my eighties. But so what if I don’t make anything out of all this knowledge? Now that I’m this old, I should be free to explore whatever gives me pleasure, without worrying about putting it to use.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“I’m just saying that you need to keep an eye out for the pockets of happiness hidden in your everyday life.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“So what makes us worry? Usually, the root cause of all fears and worries is one and the same: our ignorance.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“You don’t need to carve out a huge amount of time for volunteering or donate a large sum of money. Sharing doesn’t have to be that difficult. You might put off donating until you’re financially secure and earning more than you currently do. But money isn’t the only thing you can share. If you think hard enough, you can undoubtedly find something you can share and come up with other ways to give back to your community.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“give up, I needed to do something, anything. And always, my struggle to hold on to a last straw earned me a new chance in the end. A new door leading to an entirely different world that I had never even considered before.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Instead, learn to take everything as it comes, simply, so that your emotional muscle, just like your cardiac muscle, can grow stronger with practice.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“The more often you find something new in the ordinary, the more joy there will be in your life, with even more joy to follow.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“So I say, one must choose to live happily. Life doesn’t fall apart as long as you keep these little moments of joy and laughter nearby. Those moments are always within reach.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Many years later, when I was married and a parent myself, I finally realised what I’d done to my mother that day. What nonsense – to ask your parents to calculate the price of their love. How saddened my mother must have been to hear her son making such a demand.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“It’s so easy to hold fate accountable, especially when things aren’t going your way, isn’t it? You know, go ahead and blame it all on fate. You’ve done your best, so go easy on yourself. I get it. But then, once you’ve gathered yourself, keep your chin up and start over.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Everyone’s present is a sum of past actions and choices. Everyone has knowledge and experience accumulated over the years.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“But ordinary joy is easy to find, and an accumulation of little joys can eventually become great happiness.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“But in old age, you’re wise to listen to your children, just as in their youth, your children looked up and listened to you. Yes, I know this reversed position might feel a bit humiliating at first, but you have to respect your children’s opinion now and sometimes even negotiate with them to reach an agreement more in your favour.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“But you see, ageing is not a fate anyone can escape. We will all eventually end up past our prime. Just as all forms of life must come to an end, we humans also walk the path of decline after our biological and social primes. And once it happens, bragging about your past will not change your present. Even if you wallow in tortuous feelings of inferiority, you can’t expect great sympathies from all directions. This is the ruthless but natural truth of life. And how foolish – this pointless wrestle with your own past self!”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“And remember, having health conditions does not mean unhappiness. Life can still be satisfying if you manage your conditions well enough.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“The human body itself has this nature of irreversibility. It’s destined for an inevitable decline and eventually a complete loss of all its functions. And none of us has ever outwitted this fate.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“dream of living the simple life of bare minimums and absolute essentials. And I want to invest all else in doing the kind of work that I find meaningful and engaging.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Forgiving others is only going halfway. Forgiving myself – that’s the undeniable, complete forgiveness.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Loneliness is the enemy of a joyful life. The easiest way to combat this foe is to spend time with old friends.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“As an old man myself now, the two things I fear most are death and the lack of control that comes with illness. But what could fear ever accomplish? There’s no foolproof way to ward off all possible diseases, especially with this ageing body of mine. What can I really do other than remain vigilant and take good care of my health?”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Apparently, our children do their own hard work, growing up around our decisions. Speaking from experience, when parents live their lives to the fullest, their children grow strong in the soil of those good lives and take as much nutrients as they need. Which is to say, you don’t need to try to model whatever idea of ‘good parenting’ you hold at all times, because, in the end, if you live your own life to the best of your abilities, you naturally become a pretty decent parent for your children – and that’s all they”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“And why not adapt a ritual for the dead to the reality of the living? Based on these beliefs, I’ve kept trying to find the right way to honour this tradition.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“Every day is now a surprising gift, and it still astounds me that I’ve survived all those close calls. Now, near the end of my life, I finally understand – because the shadow of death was always looming so close-by, my life burned brighter.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“That’s my secret to happy life – seeking out whatever joy and fun I can in my everyday life. And a celebratory day is one of the best opportunities for you to have a lot of fun.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life

“In a sense, under these conditions, there’s no such thing as a good or bad parent. There are only real parents who try their very best.”
― Rhee Kun Hoo, If You Live To 100, You Might As Well Be Happy: Lessons for a Long and Joyful Life