[An Essay from My Heart]

A Thought Left Between the Pages

Each time I open a book, I encounter an object before I meet a sentence.

Before meaning, before thought, my fingers touch a thin bookmark.

It waits for me where I last paused, like a quiet threshold I must cross before entering the world of the text. That this bookmark was a gift grows more meaningful with time.

A bookmark does not speak.

It does not ask how far I have read, nor does it urge me to hurry.

It simply remembers the place I left behind.

Because of it, I do not feel anxious when I close a book.

It knows—perhaps better than I do—that a pause is not an ending, that a return has already been prepared.

At times, the face of the person who gave me this bookmark comes to mind.

There were no instructions to read diligently, no explanations about the book itself.

Instead, there seemed to be a quiet hope that I would spend time with books, unhurried and unforced.

That it would be all right to stop, to forget for a while—so long as I would one day return.

That unspoken wish feels embedded in the cool surface of the metal.

Reading is often described in terms of usefulness.

We say it expands knowledge, sharpens thinking, improves life.

Yet the reading I know is ‘slower, more intimate than that.’

It is the moment of reading a single line and then gazing out the window,

of turning back a few pages because meaning slipped away,

of lingering over a sentence without knowing why.

Reading deepens precisely as it loses ‘speed.’

In those moments, the bookmark sustains the breath of thought.

It allows reflection to pause and then resume, quietly affirming that reading is not interruption but continuity.

Because of this, the bookmark feels less like a tool and more like a small promise—

a promise that reading can settle naturally into the rhythm of life.

Each time I read, I read gratitude as well.

Beyond the words, another person’s care overlaps with my own time,

slowing me down, drawing me deeper.

Reading may be a solitary act, but its beginning is often shaped by ‘someone else’s kindness.’

Today, once again, I close my book and place the bookmark between the pages.

What remains there is not only a sentence left unfinished.

‘A person’s thought’ lingers there too—

along with ‘a quiet conviction about how reading sustains a life.’

The book will open again.

And when it does, the bookmark will be waiting, just as it always has. ***

January 20, 2026
 

At Sungsunjae (崇善齋)

{Solti}

한국어 번역: 

https://www.ktown1st.com/blog/VALover/348256