Chan-Jae-Lee
Chan Jae Lee is the 76-year-old founder of Drawings for My Grandchildren, a popular Instagram account (@drawings_for_my_grandchildren) in which he and his wife create paintings and stories for their grandchildren in the U.S. Lee and his wife live in Korea. In 1970, my wife had minor surgery. In the recovery room, she held my hand and said, “I looked around me and saw that Death was with me. But I triumphed. Since I survived, don’t you think I should have a meaningful and incredible life?” Do you know that we are accompanied by death? Acknowledging such doesn’t mean that we have to become friendly with death. Most of the time, we are too busy to think about death. But as decades have passed, I’ve found that all things lie in our heart. The heart leads us to all things. To fear death seems to come from old ways of thinking. I’ve learned a new interpretation of death, and it’s reflective of what I learned on that fateful day in 1970 when my wife woke up from her anesthesia. I often watch the passing clouds from my living room. The clouds roll and start blooming, then suddenly disappear again. Do you consider clouds to be dead? They disappeared from one place, but you see them again in a different form halfway across the sky. People say that clouds have a foolish existence, but I like them. Clouds prompt me to think. Now, rolling like clouds, let’s draw our tomorrows.

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