- I Decided To Live As Me is an illustrated non-fiction book
- Written as a to do list for everyone struggling with adulting in today’s world
- Translated from Korean
- Its goal is to comfort its readers as they figure out for themselves who they are and what life means for them
- BTS Jungkook recommended book
You can read my whole review here.
Quotes from I Decided To Live As Me
1. Even if we want to believe that time will heal everything, there are problems that can’t be solved by time, like we can’t rely on fairies for doing our delayed assignments for us while we sleep.
2. People who will exploit our anxiety to earn profit are everywhere and we can be easily lured. Therefore, stop doing your best anxiously only to prove yourself or to conform with the crowd.
3. If you don’t want your life to be put on fire, other people’s lives should be protected as well. Refrain from being curious about others’ personal lives. We can’t designate our lives as an exclusively protected area while others’ lives remain unprotected. In the same way, we shouldn’t insist on our right to know about others when we argue that thing about us should be forgotten. It’s both a prerequisite to protect our own life and one of the slightest courtesies that we can show each other as humans.
4. In a collectivist culture, a group’s goal and harmony is prioritized more than individual freedom, and people are controlled in order for the group to survive. These things are already exhausting but the bigger problem is the ‘method’ of how people are controlled. In individualistic societies, society controls people using ‘guilt’ and collectivist societies usually control the individual using humiliation. If guilt is feeling ashamed about oneself, humiliation is feeling ashamed about oneself based on how others see them. This is why we control each other and are expected to constantly be conscious of others.
5. Even if no one cares and the situation doesn’t change, we have to complain if we feel tired, and stop for a while if things are unbearable. You can’t always control yourself and think that everything’s okay and stay strong.
6. But trying to be good to those who are recklessly judging me as if they were somebody means having lost my self-defense mechanism. I’m equal with them but not weaker. Even if someone hates me, that fact will not damage my life.
7. Don’t feel ashamed for things that aren’t shameful.
8. Just like not having to abstain from eating after consuming spoiled food, you don’t have to cut off all your relationships because of a single lousy person. What matters is the sense of smell you use to distinguish spoiled food, and having that insight not to stay with insincere people.
9. Meeting somebody shady just because you are lonely will only add devastation to loneliness.
10. Just like how ocean water doesn’t go bad because of 3 percent salt, if some things are not working in the world, perhaps we each lack 3 percent effort. So, let us do what we can do. The sole savior of our society is an individual who does not ignore it.
11. The truth is, we always have to be hopeful based on reality. We can’t expect to lose weight if we eat four meals a day. If you want to hope, find a way. And if you are about the way, endure the exhaustion that comes with it. What you have to do is not to have a vague hope, nor despair without alternative, but to build a basis for hope.
12. There’s a book entitled, No Matter How You Live Your Life, I Will Support You.
But the one who needs this support the most is myself. Thus, to myself who will stay with me until my final breath, be sure to say this today:
No matter how I live my life,
I will support myself.
Hargun Kaur Sachdev 
[…] she posts her gorgeous illustrations and writing. Also, I have made a separate post listing more quotes from the book that I absolutely loved, so you can check that out […]
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